Madness

I told you the taper madness had set in early. I pulled up a bit sore from my EPIC long run on Monday (they're all epic, just ask me) and just trundled around my mid-week run yesterday morning.
Just to digress, as you do - how cool is it when you actually manage to string together a few weeks of consistent training and not get sick or busy or injured *makes warding-off-evil-eye gesture*, and you get fitter? I love how that works!
So anyway, there I was, a bit sore in the glutes and quads and taking stairs a teeny bit carefully. Nothing dramatic. But by late afternoon my left hip - not the hip that got all crabby after I had Noddie and has required extensive mollycoddling ever since, not the one I expect to crack it with me, nooo, not that one - was whingeing big time. Ow ow ow. As is the LBTEPA way, I did The Sensible Thing. I stretched that hip, stretched it like Gumby I did, and iced it and gave it ibuprofen.
As also is the LBTEPA way, I FREAKED OUT. Someone I actually know (Hi Katy!) "toughed out" hip pain and ran the Hawaii marathon with a FEMORAL NECK FRACTURE that's REALLY BAD, btw. She hasn't run since! Clearly, I was also suffering from a femoral neck fracture!! And unless I let go of my long-held dream of conquering the Gold Coast (the LBTEPA way includes overdramatising as a free service) this was clearly also my future!!! Not to mention wasting thousands of dollars in airfares and becoming morbidly obese within days!!!!Aaarrgghhh!!!!!
The management of the LBTEPA Hostel for the Temporarily Insane would like to thank the kind physio at the clinic where our heroine works for pointing out that a tight iliotibial band was a far better fit for the symptoms described, for suggesting a number of excruciating yet helpful exercises in order to loosen said area, and for not laughing too much.
Taper madness is a cruel affliction and one we should be aware of for our own and others' sakes. Other symptoms include
- obsessively reading and re-reading marathon books and blogs
- obsessive daily weighing and plunging into gloom at how much lard I will be carting around
- overt hostility toward any individual who might be harbouring germs
- actually paying money to do this. OhdearohdearohdearwhatwasIthinking?
- really thinking hard about buying one of these (the hoodie, not the bloke although he is a bit of all right)
There is very little that can be done for the sufferer other than making soothing sounds when s/he appears agitated, allowing her/him to watch Marathon Challenge and Run Fatboy Run over and over again, and taking his/her credit card away.
More anon, wanderers in the poppy fields!