Hope for the Future

I have been doing everything I can to get back on track and nothing seems to work long term. I have tried many things that have worked in the past and yet my body still seems to be spiraling downward and out of control. At times I am so tempted to throw in the towel...enough is enough. I am 30 years old and I have basically been dealing with one injury since I was 18 and thus all of the complications that come with an injury and still training on it--compensation. So, for the past 12 years I have been trying to fix my hamstring problem and now it is worse as my whole left side is unhappy and has been since May. I have been dealing with this more than half of the years I have been running. Just writing that sentence makes me want to cry, but for some reason I am still feeling the desire to train and to run hard, to try to reach my potential whatever that might be. So instead of burning all of my running shoes I am going to gather them up along with some running clothes and head west to the other side of the mountains to try to get some help figuring out what is wrong with me and hopefully learning the best way to return to top form. There is a biomechanics guru that has helped a lot of different runners with a lot of different types of problems, and despite being warned that we might not find the "smoking gun", the guru himself seemed confident that he will be able to figure out what is going on with my body and how to come back from this injury. So, I am hopeful.

Knowing that I have had some decent results in the past while battling this does give me hope for the future though. I haven't made it through a cycle or season since high school without losing precious time training to address an injury. So, one of the key components to successful distance running hasn't been there for me, ever--and that is consistency. My coach and PT have done a phenomenal job at dodging injuries and keeping me moderately healthy and able to show up at some starting lines feeling ready, but that deep ache in my upper hamstring was always there impacting some part of the performance (even if it just hurt my confidence and not my physical ability). And I am tired of constantly wondering how my body is going to rebel next. So, I am diving in and ready to face down and do whatever I need to in order to be healthy and training at level that is needed for post-collegiate running. And once I am over this hurdle, it is going to make the good races that much sweeter! I can't wait.