I returned to Vegas yesterday afternoon after an unusually smooth return trip from Flagstaff. After a couple of lighter meals, I also slept fairly well last night, and am taking a scheduled off-day from training today.
My left adductor (groin) still hurts occasionally this morning, though my hamstring today feels no ill effects. I’m sure the Saturday running and all the walking around Flagstaff contributed to whatever soreness I currently feel. It’s not particularly bad but it’s noticeable and felt enough that I’m aware I could aggravate it if I tried to run now.
At this point, I’m open to taking this whole week off from aerobic training if that will fully heal everything up, though right now the plan is to resume cross training tomorrow if everything feels okay. Any amount of perceived injury-like lower body pain at any time and I can be convinced to not train that day. I can still strength train upper body in the interim.
By this time next week it’ll have been four weeks since the hamstring pain first emerged. If I don’t train at all this week and am totally okay then, that would require about four weeks of easy, gradual buildup training before I could resume any sort of normal marathon volume.
Maybe I could have resumed running sooner had I just shut completely down, but I get the impression that my hamstring (and now groin) needed all this time to heal either way, and the way I did things (with the interim cross training) ended up benefitting me more than if I had done absolutely no training of any kind. The blood circulation and the controlled exercise stimulus helped move the healing process along, plus I maintained a good deal of my aerobic fitness through the cross training (which would not have happened had I shut down all training).
It’s entirely possible I could resume running this week, but I’m not going to hurry back into it this week. If pain free I’ll certainly try.