Holding myself together

It's starting to feel like the end of a long track season. Sometimes there is a fine line between overtraining and finding that sweet spot where you've pushed yourself to your physical peak. Hopefully I haven't gone too far over the edge yet. I am having a lot of soreness lately in my hip, lower back, and hamstrings. Not good to have at this stage. I've tried to get more running in because my training times have been coming down and my body was holding up pretty well. Then I hit the wall last weekend while running one of my go-to workouts.

It's four 200s with 75-90 seconds rest in-between. The rest time and speed both go down as the season goes on. I try to run the 200s at about 90-95% speed. It simulates the end of the 400 because by the fourth one it feels just like the end of the 400. After that last workout my hip really started bothering me and my hamstring started getting really tight. It was at the point where I could feel it while walking. I took a week off and ran my  primary workout I use to see where I'm at. It's an all out 300 followed by 15 minutes recovery and three 200s with a 200 meter walk in between. I try to get faster on each 200. Here were my times yesterday:


Distance        Time        Rest

300             37.91        15 min
200             28.04          5 min
200             27.67          5 min
200             26.58          Cooldown

The times were slower than the other two times I ran that workout this year. Maybe I can say that I was tentative because I didn't want to injure myself. Whatever the reason, what I need to do now is get past that and mentally get my focus back on running fast and not worrying about getting hurt.

I saw my massage therapist last week and my chiropractor this morning. I'll do the P90X2 Recovery and Mobility workout tonight which has a lot of rumble rolling. Then I will probably use the rumble roller again each night while I watch the Olympics. I won't do any more track workouts, but I plan to do at least one Insanity: Asylum workout this week. Those don't take quite as much of a toll on my body as running on the track does. One more visit to the chiropractor and hopefully I'll be ready to go on Friday in the open 400.