Sunday, January 31, 2010

Big trouble in little Putrajaya...

It was 6.40 am.. my new Philips MP3 player haven't even finished playing the 2nd song in my playlist.. I haven't even get into my first kilometer.. just before Masjid Putra... disaster struck... the thing all athletes preparing for something fear most... injury with less than a week to the big day.. arrghhhhh !!!!

The problem started on Tuesday.. I was doing my intervals, 5 x 800m .. I decided to do it without my 2XU calf compression sleeve.. just as I was finishing my last rep.. I felt a slight pull in my left calf, just a very slight one. I wasn't going really fast, about 5:00-5:25 pace.. & the slight pull stayed there throughout my warmdown run. When I was doing my stretching it was gone.. so I thought.. okay..

Maybe the biggest mistake happened on Wednesday. I went to the gym. I haven't lifted weights for about 3 weeks, & I decided to do the full body Spartacus workout, currently my favorite full body routine. I only managed to do 2 sets instead of the usual 3. The next day my body was sore all over. It was my rest day anyway, so I thought.. okay...

Then on Friday I was supposed to do about 8km tempo run. There was where I felt all the problems.. the slight pull on my left calf didn't go away.. the injury on my shin bone made a rerun, & I had a back pain. A back pain !!! I've never had those.. never, ever. I mean, during my runs la... So I cut short my program to just 4K of tempo. Then I went to play badminton.

& now. Sunday. Today I was supposed to do my long run, at least 16K. It was to be my last long run before the Putrajaya Nite Marathon. All the injury, sans the back injury, came back to haunt me. I couldn't even walk right. The walk back to the office from Masjid Putra took me half an hour. Slow by any standards.

Injury is not new to me. I've got injured before. I've had worse than this. But not with less than a week to my first half marathon, ever. Injury frustrates me. Even worse when U dunno what caused it. Was it the gym ? Was it becoz I decided not to wear my calf sleeves ? I tried not to rely too much on the sleeves. But it seemed now that I couldn't run without it. The last time I got injured bad.. was when I tried to break my 5K PR with my new Adizeros, without the calf sleeves. How's that ?

How do I fix this ? RICE ? With 6 days to go ? I wish I could just go to the hardware store, buy a new pair of legs, take this one off & bolt on the new one. I wish it was that easy. What I'm worried about is not getting enuff mileage before I do the race of my life. I mean, it's gonna be my 1st ever half marathon, of course it's a big thing to me. I know I can complete the run, but I dun wanna just complete it. I've got goals to achieve, targets to meet. & how would I know that this injury won't return during the race. It would've been worse.

All I want is to run pain-free. & I've been able to do just that for the past month or so. Why this injury choose this very moment to come back is really beyond my understanding.

Haih.... as strong as I am, there's only so much I can do. Right now even walking is painful, let alone running.

I hope I can fix this ASAP. Steroids anybody ?

Livestrong.

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