Let's talk about Hamstrings....

A few years ago, while doing hill sprints - I severely strained my right hamstring. All my injuries happen on my right side. I must be imbalanced on that side. It never healed completely right. I tried to do all the right things - backed off running, saw a Doctor, went to PT, actually did the exercises the PT gave me... I even resorted to a Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) injection. I was about to do a second round of PRP when I got pregnant with my second and continued to exercise, but not really run. The time off was good, but my strain had turned into tendinitis at the attachment point and it has been something I just try to work around. I ice when I start to feel it and pray that I don't re-injure myself. After the Half on Sunday, I started to "feel" it again, which means it is more sore which could turn into more - so I cut my Tuesday run short and have been icing like a mad woman. I did a google search to get some ideas for cross training and found this article which I really found interesting.

http://www.trackshack.com/training/training-talk/pain.shtml

I haven't really been working on strengthening my Abs and Obliques as much as I should- and certainly don't stretch my quads when I start feeling the tightness in the hams.. so I am going to focus on some of the things in this article and see if that helps. Just thought I'd share in case anyone else out there struggles with this too.

When you are running more, you are just a bad run away from an injury. If you don't listen to your body and push when your body is saying as politely as it can, please back off today, I need a rest to heal; you end up in the horrible spot of having to take 6 weeks off. Which is something that feels devastating. Raina over at Small Town Runner wrote a great post today about how hard it is to do this. How it is easy to tell other people this great advice, but as runners - we hate to do this ourselves. Sometimes the best thing we can do in our training is just to take a break.

A good friend posted this on our group training page and it is a great quote to remember;

"I constantly remind myself that resting takes confidence. Anyone can train like a mad man but to embrace rest and to allow all the hard training to come out takes mental strength." -Ryan Hall