Injured

What can I say, the title says it all? I am INJURED. Not the "oh I need to take an extra rest day off to get rid of this twinge" injury but a real, no running for 2+ weeks injury. The last time I took this much time off of anything, be it soccer/yoga/elliptical/running was when I had my final ankle surgery and was down for the count. I am pretty devastated. I wanted 2014 to be the year of running, my first full year that I dedicated to improving my weekly base mileage and hit some goal times/PR's across the board. So far... I am doing none of that. 

No relevance to this post, I just love my dog (6 months ago he was this small)

I was on vacation for the month of December and decided that I wanted to incorporate more speedwork into my weekly running schedule (read: start doing speedwork). I guess I didn't think about how I was increasing my mileage (albeit only by a few miles) but also running the majority of them at a pace 1-2:00 minutes faster than my normal. I got a little too aggressive and am paying the price. Looking back at my dailymile log I had some "knee" pain early December but was able to run through it until a few days before Christmas when I realized something was actually wrong. I think my last decent run was 5 miles total with 800 repeats or some shit like that at a pace that I probably shouldn't have been running and the next day when I went to take the dog out I had sharp pain around the head of my fibula. I took 4 days off completely, then tried to run again. No dice. Pain came back immediately so I hopped off the treadmill (it's been less than 5 degrees for the past 3 weeks where I live, there are no outdoor runs for this girl) and did a few miles on the elliptical which felt fine. Blergh. Fast forward a week of rest again and I try to run an easy pace on the TM and 5 minutes in the pain returns behind my knee.

Read: I really messed something up. I go back and forth whether it's ITBS, lateral biceps femoris inflammation, or a gastroc tweak/pull but whatever it is, it hurts. And it's not going away without some proper TLC. I felt lame emailing the head of the Nuun Ambassadors being like "oh hey thanks for choosing me, by the way I won't be racing for the month of January or February" but you know what? She's an athlete and I bet she totally gets it and how frustrating all this is. I just need to learn to chill out and roll with it.

Ben and Jerry's Mint Oreo. Charlie does my stress eating for me.

So here I am, entering my third week of no running. Lindsey (my coach) cooked up a plan for the next 2 weeks that involves NO RUNNING. Shoot me. But being a rational medical professional (almost) I completely agree with her and will embrace my weeks of biking and swimming. This will actually be hilarious because I dove in high school and was forced to do the relay when the "c" team was missing a girl. Let's just say I wasn't doing them any favors. I also have a couple days per week to do core work and also some hip exercises that I will hopefully stick to every day. I'm hoping that while giving my knee/calf a break from the pounding of the TM I can build up a stronger core and strength my hips to prevent this crap from happening in the future.

THIS IS THE YEAR OF PREHAB. I'm just starting it off with a mix of pre and rehab ;)