Fortune cookie from today's lunch:
You will take a chance on something in the near future.
Well, ain't that the truth. With two days between me and the half, I'm walking around like an drunk, elderly chimpanzee, having done something unpleasant to some unidentified tissues on the right side of my lower back. Ugh. I'm guessing that the source of my discomfort stems from carrying an excessively heavy satchel for too long on Sunday afternoon as I strolled through the park taking photographs. I noticed some soreness in my lower back towards the end of my walk, but didn't give it any thought until after a fairly strenuous 7-mile progression run on Monday morning. That afternoon, it was impossible for me to find a comfortable position to sit in at work and the slightest bending-over motion rendered me breathless and frozen in place waiting for the painful muscle spasms to dissipate.
After a fitful night of sleep, I took Tuesday off from running and started on a steady infusion of ibuprofen. The situation improved marginally through the day and this morning I ventured out for an easy four as a sort of amateur chiropractic attempt, hoping that the simple act of running would jolt everything back to where it should be.
I don't think I made matters worse, as I was able to maintain reasonable form and rather than actual pain, I was just very aware of an extreme tightness in the muscles around my right hip and upper butt/lower back. I'd tried doing some piriformis stretches without much affect, but have really been at a bit of a loss as to how best treat this thing. I felt okay after the run, but then nearly fell over when my right leg gave out as I bent over to peel off my running tights afterwards.
One hot shower and six more Advil later I'm back to shifting awkwardly in my less-than-ergonomic office chair, still trying to find a comfortable position. Muscle relaxers...that's what I need. I would totally self medicate at this point, but I don't think I have any.
Enough whining though. It'll either improve sufficiently by Saturday or it won't and I'm just going to have to play it by ear until then. Even if it does, I still feel sluggish as hell and am now seven pounds over my weight from this time last year, so I'm just going to try and approach this thing conservatively and assuming I run the thing, chalk it up as one more 13 mile MP training run. It's not going to be the race I was hoping to run, but there's still a 10K coming up in May and as long as the stars are even loosely aligned that day (as well as my back), my PR for that distance is totally within striking range.
Alison has a nice interview with not one, but two other Michelles on her new schmancy running website eliterunning.com. Both Michelles just qualified for the Olympic trials in Boston, so I found myself gazing longingly at the words on the computer screen like a starving street urchin leaving nose prints on the cold glass window of a patisserie. Drooling even.