You know, walking around with an icepack strapped to one’s groin is pretty much exactly as fun as it sounds.

This thing seems to be getting a bit worse with each long run I do. And it’s pissing me off. I’ve been finding that I can go back to midweek training after a couple of days, get some short runs in, everything’s OK, then another long run, and:

I kind of like the agonized way the word pain is written in the picture above. And it’s in red too. Seems to fit.

Anyway, I had a real crappy 17.5 miler this weekend. In addition to the aforementioned discomfort in the groinal region (inguinal is the proper term, but I prefer groinal, even though it’s, well, not actually a word) I didn’t hydrate very well and the thing turned into a death march by the end (it was my first long run in above freezing temperatures and apparently I forgot that I sweat while I exercise under normal circumstances). I’m sure I looked like I was trying to chase Rick Grimes down or something. Fortunately no one decided to stick a penknife in my brain in the interest of public safety.

So, now the dilemma. Should I push on, and continue this unfortunate cycle, with the hope that I can nurse the injury enough that I can still get some training volume in and run a relatively fast time after my taper? Or should I hop on the dreaded stationary bike for a couple of weeks, sacrifice training volume, and show up to the line healthy but probably unable to do much other than maybe just break the 4:00 barrier?

I think I’m going to pick door number two, unfortunately. I’ve obviously been overtraining, so I’ll be shutting it down until my next 10k in a couple of weeks. It’s not like I was going to BQ with my first marathon anyway. We shall see how things feel next week, but this is going to limit the number of long runs I can do (it looks like I’m going to have to settle for one 20 miler instead of the three I was planning).

I guess it beats hobbling around like I just got hit with a sledgehammer by Kathy Bates.