The Silver Lining

Today is Friday, and I haven't run since an easy five on Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday night I strained my right hamstring at karate (while gently stretching, just so we're clear about where this injury falls on the coolness spectrum), and have been unable to jog even a few strides down the hallway without a pretty significant amount of pain ever since. I'm walking a little funny, too. Not full-on limping, but enough that I can tell the difference.

If you've never had one, hamstring injuries are teh suck. You always seem to get them for stupid reasons, they're incredibly easy to aggravate, and they take forever to heal. I will be the first to admit that with the exception of ab stuff & push-ups (which we do regularly at karate), I've been somewhat derelict about strength work as of late, so in a way I feel like I kind of can't complain.

Going on my 3rd day of no running, you might think I'm turning into a crazy, anxious wreck over here the way I did a couple of weekends ago when I got 27 miles behind, but for whatever reason, I feel surprisingly chill and calm about it. I think it's probably because I truly cannot do anything about it except leave it alone and let it heal. It's not a matter of getting up earlier, or planning ahead better, or prioritizing differently, which is the kind of failure that tends to set of my mental pity parties. Also, it's not like it's a stress fracture or something like that that's going to interrupt my training for weeks on end. It's just a stupid little minor injury that's just bad enough that I can't run through it, the kind of thing that happens to the best of us (not that I'm counting myself among the best of us) from time to time for no good reason.

Instead, I've found myself making the best of it by using the time I would've been running to catch up on all kinds of things that often tend to get neglected. Blogging, for example. Cleaning the bathroom. Organizing my closest. A few other projects I keep talking up and not doing anything about. And that's actually been really nice.

Which is not to say I'm not *really* looking forward to the damn thing getting better so I can get back to business; I am not trying to have another ten mile week, here. But it's good to find that I won't necessarily fall completely apart emotionally if I can't run for a few days in any & all situations.

I am also reminded lately that, even on my least inspiring weeks, I still have the time, money, support, health, strength, & circumstances to train for & run a marathon. Which probably puts me around the top 5% of the US population in terms of how fortunate I am. And that is an important thing to remember.