Sometimes I simply amaze myself...

I think I have a corner on the market for stupid!  But this time I outdid myself and even I am having trouble believing that I was this freaking stupid!

My training has been absolutely fantastic! One run after another was continuing to just get better and better.  Endurance was improving. Speed was improving. And my overall fitness level has been increasing significantly.  My pain was decreasing all the time.  Everything was getting better and better!

But I know for certain that my hip and my toe don't like uneven surfaces.  Even walking the trails at Medoc getting ready for the Medoc Trail Races let me know without a doubt that I should not be doing trails of any nature.  Be fine but then there would be one rock or one pine cone or one stick That I would step on and I would immediately feel pain.  Not a terrible pain but the pain that lets me know that I'm not anywhere close to 100%.

Actually my toe is doing fantastic!  The pain I'm feeling there is simply a "range of motion" pain that, while sharp, is not troublesome.  It's my hip that is actually my bigger problem.  Now been just over two years and my hip has not fully recovered . . . and maybe it will never be!

Me wrong . . . it's not bad.  When the hip starts hurting it's something between pain, a burning and an odd weakness that I feel.  Never terrible but when it starts it's doesn't get better during a run.

I've known I need to stay away from trails for a while.  Maybe even forever.  While trails were always my first love, I still enjoy running on the roads.  And having to give up trails is far from the end of the world!

So after marking all the trails for the Medoc Trail Races I knew that I needed to stay away from the trails for at least several months.  No walking or no running on trails.  Period.  Paragraph.  End of story!

Well it should have been the end of the story but this last weekend my stupidity took hold!

With all the improving I have been doing I was looking forward to getting out and trying to race again.  A real race!  So I found there was a 5K and 10K race last weekend near where I  live called "The Picasso Run."  The website showed people happily running on roads!  Perfect!!  So Saturday morning I drove to Roanoke Rapids for the race and entered the 10k. 

At the race briefing about five minutes before the start of the race I heard the race director mention "the condition of the trail was excellent but with some leaves down!"

What the hell?  Condition of the TRAIL?  What fucking trail????????

Ask one of the guys standing near me how much trailer was since we were starting on the road.  The first quarter of a mile was a road but then we entered the trail for the rest of the way!! I knew this trail well as I wanted many many times,  It's an extremely easy trail with fairly good footing and just minor hills. (In full disclosure I must say that on the website, it clearly said "5k & 10k Trail Race" . . . guess I just didn't read that close enough!!)

Right then I should have called it a day!

But since the trail was an easy trail I told myself that maybe I could do it and not hurt myself.  And actually during the run I did fairly well.  The pain wasn't bad at all and I thought I had dodged a bullet!  No residual pain!

That is until I went for my run this morning!  After taking Sunday off for rest I headed out for my run this morning and I instantly knew everything was NOT right!  Hip pain was there from the first stride!  And it just got worse and worse as a went so out about 1.5 miles I stopped running, turned around and walked home.

I'm fairly sure this is nothing really serious.  I'm almost 100% certain I did no real damage.  But what I did was just STUPID.  I'll take a couple of days off and I'll be fine.  Physically that is. 

Mentally . . . I don't think you can fix stupid!!