Yeah, well.  Anyway.  Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.

It’s been a crazy week or so for me.  It turns out that I was being wildly optimistic in thinking that I’d be able to continue my current running program indefinitely and without injury with a 43 (ouch) year old pair of legs.  There was other craziness this week which is now largely resolved and not really blog worthy.  This level of drama always happens in clusters.  To make you appreciate the life you lead in between the clusters, I suspect.

What I thought was just a bit of old lady non-specific lower back pain is actually a combination of sacro-iliac joint dysfunction and pyriformis muscle strain.  Long story short, I’ve had needles stuck into me and had my hip taped.  I’ve also had to do some exercises at home to help the healing process along.  I suspect I’ve managed to strain another muscle in the process.  

But the hardest part has been not being able to run.  It was torture not going out the back door each morning to rack up a few k’s.  I missed the sounds and sensation of being out there in the fresh air as my neighbourhood got into gear for the day ahead.  I missed how alive and ready for the day those runs made me feel as I got back into the house and got stuck into the business end of the morning.

The days away from running weren’t just all about me feeling sorry for myself.  It’s given me time to rethink my fitness routine and relationship to running.  How I need to give myself time to rest between long, hilly runs. How to not be tempted to skip the slow or short runs in a program (or to add runs to the plan) because of my ego wanting to replace them with more longer distanced runs to make my weekly stats look better.

I’ve realized that if I want running to be part of my life in the long term, then my running routine needs to change to reflect my life.  I need to lose the rigid ‘mind over matter’ mindset and embrace rest days and moderation instead.  I also need to accept my body and its current limitations while also being proud of what it’s done and can do right now.  I’ve been pretty good at not focussing on the mirror and measurements but I think I also need to lose the focus on pace and weekly distances run.  

I’ve never really thought that hard about ageing and what it means to me specifically but I guess I’m running (no pun intended) out of excuses to ignore its inevitable influence on my life.

As part of the negotiations in my recovery program, I was allowed to reintroduce some low range runs into my life over the weekend.  I’m heading back to the physio today and I hope I’m allowed to run a bit for over the coming week.  At the very least, I’m hoping I’ll be cleared to do the parent and teacher race at Master SSG’s first ever athletics carnival this Friday.