Things I Forgot to Workout 4: Sitting

For those of you following along, I managed to start my back injury by my crappy posture while studying for hours upon hours a day. Here's what I should have done...

1. stop slouching. while I wrote that I had to correct myself
2. Don't sit without your lumbar region planted to the back of the chair... SI joints don't like the extra pressure from you sitting your butt on the front edge and leaning back
3. Try doing a few superman moves per day. Lay on your belly, lift up both your legs and feet. Yell "To infinity and beyond!". Change the name of the exercise to "The Buzz Lightyear".

Not much else right now. I'm just biding my time until the back doesn't hurt. Still haven't hit the trails for a good run, and it's been almost to weeks. That breaks my heart a bit.

On the positive note, XTERRA Triathlons are a go for next year. I'm incredibly excited.

Injury makes me reconsider

This low back/SI thing is getting fairly old. It's easily been a full month since the initial hard injury (wakeboarding) and then little over a week after the set back injury (road run). As such, I'm reconsidering some race commitments.

I had originally planned to return to the Bobcat Trail Marathon, my wife and my own first trail marathon, and actually had a fairly good plan on how to perform much, much better than my quad cramping crap run. I've now lost at least 2 months worth of time to injuries that have absolutely nothing to do with skiing (ribs = skiing, back = wakeboarding). I'm noticing a trend. Either my crashes have become that much more spectacular, I'm just taxing my body too much, or I'm just getting old and weak. I would like to think it's mostly spectacular crashes, but I'm inclined to agree with the last two. It's been... about 9 years since I've taken a month off from working hard toward goal X, Y, or Z. I think I've been digging and have finally found water, which is unfortunate because I'm not that amazing at swimming.

It looks like the Bobcat may not happen. My last long run was 17 miles. My plan was to end up doing at least a 30 before the race. Not going to happen, when there's only 11 weeks until the race. Furthermore, it's about 2-3 months out until skiing. I would drop running in a heart beat if you told me I had to choose b/w running and skiing.

So... thoughts?
Should I push through and try to do the Bobcat?
What about the 50k this January?
How about XTERRA Tri's next year?

Injury stupid face stupid.

I've become increasingly aggrevated by non-running induced injuries. As a medical student, I do a lot of sitting. This sitting has lead to Sacro-Illiac Joint Dysfunction. Fancy way to say that my butt and lower back hurt preeeetty badly. I managed to handle the problem through chiropractic care (HUUUUGE shout out to Solon Spine and Wellness) I then went wakeboarding and trashed the back all over again. Turns out a lot of twisting, jumping, and crashing head over heels is not conducive to a healing joint. Suprise.

The SI joint has been rearing it's ugly head something terrible recently. Dr. Hagar was able to work quite a bit of it out, but still, it's not super fun to sit. It's also slightly miserable when I start running. Generally the back wears into it, and the pain starts to dissipate. That's not helping me get up at 5am to run. Not a bit. In fact not at all.

So I'm looking for motivation. Spending more time in the pool, good time on the bike, and faster runs. Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone have any advice?

How do you stay motivated? I try to read running articles (check out Nick Billocks blog for a great source of pump up). It typically works, but that's not what I love to do at 5am.

I'm learning a lot about how to push through the downer feeling of injury. I think this is just as important to the athlete as any hard workout. The mental aspect of sport is HUGE! I use visual techniques to push myself through hard running sections, bad bouldering problems, dangerous climbs, and insane skiing. Try it out!

Spend 2 minutes, calming down, prepping yourself for the mental stress of a very difficult activity. Envision yourself pushing through the crux segments of whatever activity. For instance, I spent a long time studying and walking through the crux of a 10 foot huck onto ice. That time was critically important to avoiding injury. It really helped to have mentally accepted my success, and all I had to do was open the throttle.

I'm trying the mental game through this SI injury. I'll let you know how it goes...