Straight From the Heart

I canceled my PT appointment this past Friday. I had to attend an important(?) meeting after our students went home, so blowing it off to take care of groin issues would have been unwise. I searched online and found about ten exercises to do that are good for a groin strain and all involve adductor stretches, which is what PT guy told me we'd be doing. I'll also be receiving ultrasound treatments and heat along with the torturous stretching I'll be doing at PT. Yesterday I did all four stretches, and hated them. Hating stretching and the pain involved is why I'm in this situation now. I've been lazy, having not stretched for about the past year. My (il)logical reasoning for not doing them was because, you guessed it, it hurts. When I did my stretches yesterday, they indeed did hurt. But it's a good pain. I also discovered that when I sit in a chair and cross my right leg over my left leg at the knee, my right knee is up in the air about six inches. That can't be good, especially since I don't have that problem when I cross my left leg over my right. I'll ask PT guy about that. You would think I would have noticed that before, huh?! So I'm adopting the "No pain, no gain" motto for this. I know the temporary pain will help me recover quickly, be more flexible, be stronger, and run faster. My times in 2009 were slower than my previous year. Up until now I was attributing it to becoming older and having plateaued with my running. For the past six months or so I've been feeling more like I've been forcing my run rather than running naturally. Meg explains this better than I ever could in her blog in this post: (Sorry, I STILL can't figure out make it take you to the link when you click on it) http://megrunsalot.blogspot.com/2010/02/power-vs-force.html So for 2010, I'm vowing to stretch and exercise more, using more work and time and less power (again, see Meg's post). Assuming my 53 year old body can get into better shape through exercising and stretching, then I vow to go for PR's in a 5K and a half marathon this year. The trade-off will be that I still have no plans to run another marathon. I would have liked to have broken a 4 hour marathon finishing time and am not satisfied with my NY City Marathon time. But, my training time is limited and I don't have the desire or motivation to spend six months training for another marathon. Training for marathons had become more of a chore than I wanted it to be. Running was no longer fun, and if it wasn't fun, then I didn't want to do it, or reluctantly did it. Maybe I'll change my mind about another marathon once I've loosened and strengthened my legs and lower body and learned to run more naturally and less forcefully. I may even look into joining a running group to help motivate me more. I'm bored running by myself, and up until now not having running goals also made me less likely to run, or run with a purpose. Now I have goals, and that will help. I may look into joining a gym to also keep me motivated to exercise, but only if I can find one that doesn't look intimidating with 20 something year olds as the only members. I get out of work at 3, and there's a PT place a few miles from where I work that has a gym. It's pretty well deserted at 3 p.m. and the people who work there are helpful. It's where I had my PT the last time I was injured. I've also been asked my a few co-workers to teach them how to run once the warm weather arrives, so I'm looking forward to that. Before I go, I have a favor to ask. Please dedicate your next run to me, or someone you know who can't run. Send some of your positive running vibes to them and me, and help us recover that much sooner and faster and become that much stronger. Crazy perhaps, but it can't hurt, can it? Run because you can, because you want to, and because you need to. Running is a gift. A gift that you'll treasure forever and never want to give up. Enjoy your run: admire the scenery, listen to the sounds around you, smell the fresh air, listen to your feet pounding the ground, groove to your music, sweat like a pig. In other words, get out there and run and do whatever it takes to have fun...