I'm a Hipster Doofus

Yeah, see that pathetic looking dude over there on the right? That's me. I've become my own pain in the butt, literally.

I've had some discomfort in my hip area for about a month now I'd say. I even went as far as talking about the matter with the Blue Jays strength and conditioning guru to see what I might be doing wrong. He gave me some tips and everything seems to be going fine since.

Then around Sunday (six days ago), the discomfort flared up a little more, unsurprisingly, the day after I logged 10 miles. I didn't think much of it and I ran a hard three miles on Monday -- sticking to my program -- and on Tuesday, man, I could barely get out of bed. The discomfort had turned into full-fledged pain.

I continued to think it was the left side of my hip, but upon further review, the source is deep in my left glute. Yeah, my left cheek. So I googled "Pain deep in buttocks" and found this thing called Piriformis Syndrome, which I may or may not have, but includes symptoms that I've been having -- hip discomfort being one of them.

It says this "syndrome" is more common in women than in men, but that in other cases it can be common among runners. Hmmm, I seem to fall within that group (Runners -- not women!). Kelly was down here this past week and she thinks it could simply be from running on the hard promenade, which is made up of cobblestones. It could be that, combine with the running form I discussed with the Jays guy.

He said that one problem I could be having is running too upright, suggesting that I lean slightly forward during my stride instead. I thought that was going well, but maybe I reverted back to a more upright technique while logging the 10 miles on Saturday. It's been uncomfortable to go up stairs, get up from my seat, get out of bed and at times even to walk.

Needless to say, I haven't logged any miles since Monday, even though I've been going stir crazy. It's weird how I start getting really antsy if I haven't gone running in a couple days. I'm itching to get back out there and I'll probably start with a slow three miles tomorrow (Monday). The wife isn't here to tell me to take it easy any more, so if I do go running, I need to at least force myself to focus on finishing, not setting record time or anything.

That 10 mile run was great, though. I finished in 1:21:31, or a little more than 8 minutes per mile. My splits were 8:09/8:21/8:24/8:23/8:20/8:23/8:12/8:06/8:10/7:03. Yeah, I had enough leftover at the end to run nearly a 7-minute mile on the last mile. I could've kept the pace slower and done a few more miles, but I figured 10 was a solid long run at this point.

The following day, which apparently wrecked my body, I ran 3 miles in 21:48 (7:08/7:10/7:30). That last mile might've been more in line with the first two had it not been for a giant puddle of water that I didn't see. It felt like my whole foot went under and my entire right shoe and sock were soaked with about 1/4 of a mile to go. I was not happy, cuz I was hoping to break 21 minutes. Ah, well. I ended up breaking me instead.

We'll see how I feel this week...