Non-Injuries (ish)

I have been working like a beast to keep myself injury free as I'm ramping up the miles on Pfitz' marathon training program.  And so far so good.  Sort of.

The number of NON-injury-injuries I've had this past week are through the roof.  It started on Wednesday's early morning mid-week long run.  10 on the schedule.  It was one of the most amazing runs I've had in a long time.  I had some minor chafing (or so I thought) towards the end, but nbd.  Until I got home, and realized my right thigh was absolutely shredded.  I wore a skirt to work, and it was unbearable.  I complained so much that a co-worker found a gauze pad for me to throw on top of it.

(This was the LEAST angry it looked. Finger included for size reference.  Owie.)

I took a rest day Thursday to let it dry out and scab up.  Friday I wore my super shorty short booty shorts for my tempo run before work.  I know a lot of people go with longer shorts to keep chafing away, but my legs rubbing together don't cause issues.  I have enough natural lubrication in the form of sweat to keep that from happening.  (I also used body glide to be safe.)  (Did I just use the term natural lubrication in my blog?  Yes... yes I did.)  My issues is from my legs rubbing with any sort of fabric or seam in between them.  Needless to say, I had a stellar tempo run, no thigh issues.   However, I ended the run with a plethora of blisters on my feet.  Most were small water blisters.  But one on the inside of my big toe was ginormous.  And partially a blood blister.

I did some doctor work on the blister Friday after work--poke, drain, bandage, only to find it was full again a couple of hours later.  Usually my blisters just look bad, and don't hurt at all, but not this bugger.  Ouch.  I continued to pop and re-drain before and after runs throughout the weekend.

Saturday I wasn't thinking when I set out for my recovery run.  I threw on shorts and a tank because it was sunny.  Since my thigh chafing had scabbed, I figured I'd be fine with whatever.  I still used body glide, because clearly I learned that all important lesson.  Well wouldn't you know it, I managed to chafe OFF the chafing scab!!  Holy effing ouch.  Fairly certain I will have a nice scarred reminder on my inner thigh of the time that my Lululemon shorts and I were above body glide and chafing.  We were so wrong running gods, plz forgive.

THEN Saturday night I started to feel something tight in my neck.  I tried to massage it out.  (And coerced Kyle in to giving it a hand.)  But no success.  I went to bed with dreams of a delightful long run swimming through my head.  I woke up in the middle of the night in so much pain, I couldn't even lift my head without using my hands to do the work.  I popped some ibuprofen and tried to fall back asleep.  My alarm went off at 5:30am, and my neck was still throbbing, so I turned off my alarm and fell back asleep.  9am I woke up, popped some more ibuprofen and worked on getting ready for my long run.

Naturally since I'd waited to mid-morning to get out there, it was super steamy and miserable by the time I actually started to run.  But the good news, other than not being able to look left for oncoming traffic/bikers/etc without turning my full body to the left, it managed to loosen up a bit, and continued to loosen during my shower after the run, and I was able to sleep through the night without ibuprofen.

But hey, at least it's not my IT band, hips, and/or knees, right??