My quad was feeling sore, couldn’t tell if it was a sore muscle or if it was my stress reaction. I guessed that since I was feeling some pain in the road race and since it’s right in the same area as my stress reaction it was that. So I told Drew and Paul cause they were both right there, Paul said I couldn’t do any of the workout and Drew said to do the warmup, see how it feels then do 20% again if it was alright. Did the warmup, it felt fine still just sore, so I did 2 miles. 7:14 average. Then told Drew it was fine and wanted to do more, I honestly just felt like it was sore, but then another part of me said well it’s only tender in that spot and not on the other leg... ehhh I always just like to push through things. Anyways Drew said I could do another mile, was going to do it on the grass slow behind the girls, did one lap then Drew stopped me and said I was going to bike instead cause a birdie told him I like to run through injuries until it’s too late. I think it was Paul. Yeah I can’t really deny that so... bike it was. 30 minutes, threw in 2x8 minutes hard to mimic the workout.
Then rolled out, stretched, and Drew took a look at it. MY MIND IS SO BLOWN RIGHT NOW. Drew asked me to contract my quad, keep it contracted and flex my foot, raise my leg up keeping both contracted, come back down, relax my foot, then relax my quad and I was having the hardest time doing it individually like that. I just wanted to contract and release everything at once. I just took motor learning last semester and my mind is so blown, it was like everything I learned applied in real life. Whaaat. Apparently my VMO hasn’t been firing and my other muscles have been taking on the forces instead. It took a whole lot of concentration and mental focus to get it right. So I did 3 sets of 8 of that to learn how to properly fire it and start making those neural pathways.
This could be the reason I got a stress reaction in my femur of all places, the strongest bone in the body. Either that or my vastus medialis was just weak, but it definitely stopped firing at one point. Basically the rest of my muscles picked up the slack until the forces exceeded what those muscles could take, the weakest muscle was the VMO so that helped develop a stress reaction in my femur. I am shocked at how difficult it was to do such a simple task like that. Also my left quad is visibly larger than my right, indicating a muscle imbalance.
That gives me some hope, I was pretty sad before practice because it felt like I was never going to recover from this. But now, if I can learn to fire the VMO properly and restrengthen it, then ease back into things like planned, I’ll be back for track season :) there’s no need to rush. I think being in the afternoon group is good for me because I won’t be as pressured to come back fast, I won’t be tempted to run farther and hit faster paces than I can handle. So for right now, I’m content with it. And I won’t get so competitive trying to prove myself every day. I need to be better about relaxing and allowing myself to recover on the days I need to.
Rapid rebooted and iced after.
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