More Injury Woes - Pulling out of my Target Race

OK. Deep breath. Time to bite the bullet and really admit I have a problem and not just keep running around it.  If I could have thought of an injury and running addiction related 12 Step Programme along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous, then that would make for a fun analogy and maybe an interesting blog post. However, I got to Step 2 and was just too depressed to go any further as the programme went like this:

Step 1: Admit you have an injury.
Step 2: Stop running.

So, Step 1 finds us sitting in the virtual village hall of my blog with me saying "My name is Richard and I have an injury problem."  Then you settle into your plastic stackable chairs, with your sweaty bums and your earnest, sincere and supportive faces on.

Step 3: Eat loads of cake, mostly chocolate.
Step 4: Start drinking.

Before we get ahead of ourselves and I end up having to live in one of those sheds opposite Kings hardware store on Sandhurst high street, we better back up to Step 1.  The main injuries are to my right hip flexor or groin (it's hard to tell - possibly iliopsoas muscle or tendon that attaches it to the pelvis or aductor, but not a tear) and left patella tendon.

I have been running just 5 or 6 miles at a time and the runs go like this - setting off, my right hip flexor feels tight and painful on each step but this gradually decreases as I warm up. Meanwhile, my left knee has a dull ache that becomes slightly stronger with time on the left side of the tendon just below the kneecap.  By 2 or 3 miles, everything is warmed up nicely and I am running mostly pain free, but by the time I get to 5 or 6 miles there is pain deep in the right upper thigh and pubic bone which is loads worse if I stop and then start running again. That would have meant being able to do 1 lap of the Endure 24 course and then pretty much walking from then on for the next 23 hours! No thanks - that's not what I signed up for.

So Step 2 has seen me pull out of Endure, my target race for the year, and also the first Yateley 10k race which was to have been 10 days before. My only good fortune out of this, is that I hadn't booked anything for over a month after Endure to give me time to recover after that.  At least I now have nearly 2 months break from events to rest, recover, rehabilitate and restrengthen.

Step 3: Eat cake, mostly chocolate.
Step 4: When pain free, get stretching and foam rolling those hip flexors, hamstrings, ITB, quads and calves.
Step 5: Gentle strengthening of glutes and hip flexors, keep those stretches going.
Step 6: Low impact exercise to keep cardio fitness going (cycling, swimming)
Step 7: Take more breaks from sitting at work and go do some more stretches
Step 8: Build back to running gradually.
Step 9: Keep working on strength
Step 10: Keep working on flexibility and foam rolling.
Step 11: Enter a race and finish pain free.
Step 12: Eat more cake, mostly chocolate!