The week where my butt feels better….and then doesn’t.

Monday – cross training. Swim 1800 meters. I did a combination of laps and drills. My chiropractor recommended I throw in some breast stroke so I did that. It felt horribly awkward and man if I thought I was slow at freestyle well, I had another thing coming. Breast stroke took twice as long. Also if anyone reading this knows anything about swimming and how to cut back the number of strokes per lap please let me know. Supposedly this helps speed but for the life of me I can’t seem to decrease it.

Tuesday tempo run. Goal was 1 easy/5 @ 7:50 pace, but with my butt still feeling a little heavy I averaged more like 8:00 I think. My warm up mile honestly felt more uncomfortable than the faster ones.

Wednesday – speed work run. Goal was 8×800 @ 6:45 pace with 1:30 rest, but that didn’t happen. Instead I did a workout similar to the Yasso 800’s theory (which says if you can run 10×800 in 3 minutes 40 seconds you should theoretically be able to run a marathon in 3 hours 40 minutes) because it allowed a slower pace (7:20) and a full 3 minutes 40 seconds of rest between sets. I did 8×800, and stretched between each set.  I felt ok but I had taken an ibproufen earlier that day. Also, this was the day I had an allergy test and discovered I’m allergic to grasses. Can you tell?

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Thursday – woke up hurting again. Ugh. Did yoga and stretched.

Friday – still hurting. Did more yoga. Needed two ibuprofen. But, I did get quite the triathlete Christmas (swim paddles, wheel block, speed and cadence sensor for the trainer, new pedals and cleats). If my nerdiness wasn’t shining through before, it certainly is now, because I also registered for a Half Ironman next October!

Saturday – My chiropractor said riding shouldn’t aggravate my PSOAS, so I did 30 minutes on the trainer, and some more yoga. I dislike the trainer, and now that I have the speed sensor to REALLY tell me how slowly I’m going, I dislike it even more. But, like the treadmill, sometimes its a necessary evil and today I was happy to have it. On the plus side, it seemed to HELP my butt, and by the afternoon I didn’t need any more ibproufen.

Sunday – long run  ride. My butt was genuinely feeling better this morning, but at the risk of running too soon and aggravating it AGAIN, I joined the group bike ride. I guess this is one advantage of 80 degree weather in December. I tried to stay consistent with the cardio/effort/time goal of the run as much as possible, so I set a “race pace” goal of an average 19.5 MPH over 35 miles or roughly an hour and 50 minutes. I wasn’t very consistent lap to lap but averaged 19.4, and did very little drafting,so I think the goal was achieved. Plus, no ibuprofen needed!

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With two weeks till race day and an obviously still easily aggravated PSOAS, there is a good chance I’ll be taking my workouts to the bike and pool and just try to reap a similar cardio benefit. It’s frustrating, but would beat a DNS for sure.