An Update

Last Ice Beard of the season (probably)

I have been quite awful about keeping up with this blog lately. Not surprisingly, this has coincided with a bit of a reduction in my running, due to several factors.

The primary motivating factor happened several weeks ago now. I recently started in on Parkour training again, in addition to my running and climbing (climbing has fallen off lately, but that's ok). After a few weeks of this, I got a sudden, sharp pain in my groin that would not go away. Knowing my family history, I assumed it was a hernia and stopped running.

Sure enough, I went to the doctor, and he found a (small) hernia. He said it was tiny, and didn't necessarily need any surgery, or even a reduction in my current workout routine. Nonetheless, running was pretty uncomfortable for a week or so, and I dropped off considerably for a while.

I made an appointment with a surgeon, to see what the benefits and drawbacks of getting surgery immediately (read: in the off-season) might be. Lo and behold, at the appointment, the surgeon found no sign of a hernia at all! I was feeling better, and so tried to get back into running a full schedule again.

Pike Island Skiing. Snow's gone now. 

I have also now upped my Parkour workouts from once a week to twice a week. While these are not running-specific workouts, I think over all they considerably help me in my trail running. They certainly boost my overall power, with the jumping and vaulting involved. I also think the increase my resistance to injury. There are so many different forces coming from so many different angles that my legs adapt to more situations. Hopefully this will translate into running.

Even if it doesn't, I enjoy Parkour too much to quit.

Did I mention I also do two strength workouts a week?

With all of that, my running workouts have suffered a bit, both in distance and in intensity. But now my body seems to be adjusting to the increased workload, and I'm hoping that in the next few weeks I can begin to up my running time again. At the very least, I need to start getting in a longish run on Saturday morning, and a fartlek or similar sometime during the week.

As is this snow.