An angry adductor

Wed - 90 mins, 18k's @ about 5:15 mins/km

The right thigh niggle which I alluded to in earlier posts worsened yesterday. I had bailed out of my group run with Glenda and co because I woke up at 4:30am and was in sheer exhaustion from an 11 hour working day on Tuesday and two consecutive nights of less than eight hours sleep. As I had the day off work, it was an easy decision to go back to sleep for two hours and do a run by myself along the Kedron Brook. However, the right thigh refused to allow me a full range of motion and I shuffled uncomfortably through a 5:37 opening k and it was half an hour of running at 5:25 pace before I warmed up enough to get a fuller range of motion. I was thinking to myself 'Gees, if I've still got this problem come Gold Coast, a half hour warm up might be a tad long!' The second half of the run saw me running a bit closer to normal speed, but I felt incapable of going any faster. Fortunately, a visit to Shane Lemcke had already been scheduled for that day and after a couple of minutes of searching he located the offending tight adductor muscle which can be found to the inside of hamstring. Shane speculated that the injury was a typical overuse/increased intensity injury as I ramp up the mileage and increase the speed (see attached photo from Tuesday!). Shane recommended a couple of easy days, heat packs and some mild stretching would help but physio and massage would provide most of the healing benefits.

After an 11 hour sleep last night and quite a few sessions with the head pack the adductor feels much better but I've decided to do easy 50 min runs tomorrow morning and Sunday night, working around my third consecutive long run of 2hr 50 min on Saturday morning which will take in the Warwick Pentath-Run Half Marathon. I won't be racing, just taking in the event as part of my R4YL reporting commitments. I'm comfortable with the decision to give my second speedwork session a miss as there is only the potential to make small gains in speed but there is the risk of losing a crucial long run on the weekend if the adductor flares up again.