The Injury Blehs

I know I've been MIA for a while now - as it turns out, a couple of weeks ago, my hamstring started bothering me. It was cramping up, felt worse when I was sitting down and didn't seem to recover over night (ie. something about the position I slept in wasn't helping it either).

Now while I was able to keep up my running, I pared it down quite a bit - shorter runs and not as fast. As for the rest of my P90X, I cut out all squats and lunges (so no Legs and Back, and no Plyo. *sniff*) and I trimmed down all the left-legged warriors in Yoga X. (ha! those left-legged warriors... so sneaky!)

While that still left a reasonable amount of working out - and I'm still doing something pretty much 5 days a week, it's been a bit frustrating and I haven't been able to talk myself into writing about the workouts, much less write about the Recovery Drink Showdown and the Runner's P90X plan I've promised I would. Don't worry - I haven't forgotten.

In the meantime, I've been trying to do my best and treat myself like a pro-athlete: Numerous massages, icing, heating, wrapping... the works. It's just frustrating that it doesn't seem to be getting better. I know that my sitting at a desk isn't helping it, but there's not that much I can do about that - it's my work!

So sorry to keep you all hanging - I promise I'll do my best to get back on track and hopefully this pain will go away soon enough.

(As to what caused it, I'm not sure, but I think I may have strained it in a plyo squat jumping move perhaps?)

P90X Bottom - Week 1

Well, week one's out of the way - the only workout I missed was Sunday's Kenpo X but I have a decent excuse: I ran the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon yesterday and was too tired to do Kenpo X on top of that.

How did it go, you ask? Not that well. For starters, it has been becoming clear to me these past few weeks that while P90X has been great for getting my body into general shape, it hasn't been helping my running much. Not because it isn't a good supplement to my running, but because when working out 6 days a week for this plan, it's hard to fit in as many running days as I used to.

In addition to the P90X, I'd only be running 2-3 days in each week and really only started doing 3 days once I'd figured out that my running was getting the shaft.

So to begin with, I wasn't quite in the same running shape I was in last year. And then, on top of that, it sleeted on us. Literally. Possibly hailed too. Freezing cold rain nailing us in the face between miles 9.5 and 11.5. We had to run bending over so as not to get it all in the face. And then my hip started hurting. It was a great race, really.

So enough with my whining. Here's what I'm going to do about it: My training schedule for the Relay is out and that's when I want to do my best time this year, so my plan for P90X is to continue with the lower body and core focus and make sure I run 3-4 times a week. My week should look a bit like this:

• Tuesday: Legs & Back (instead of on the night before my long run)
• Wednesday: Plyo in the morning, short run in the afternoon
• Thursday: Longer run with hills or sprints
• Friday: Yoga X
• Saturday: Whichever upper body it happens to be in the morning followed by a short run
• Sunday: Long run, Kenpo X optional (I think most of the time, I'll do both, it'll just depend on how hard the run was.
• Monday : Rest

On the plus side, the first of my 8 in '08 is completed. Now I just have to find the next 7 half-marathon+ races... I'm hoping to do Dublin in the fall.