Bumpy Road

Right now I am supposed to be in Tokyo having a blast and preparing to try and redo the magic from my first sub 90 minute 20km I did last year at the same race in Japan. Instead, I am at home enjoying family time and feeling like I am starting my season all over again. The last time I wrote, I recapped my 2015 season, my most successful season to date. I wish I could be writing to say how great my training has been going and that I knew with certainty that this was going to be another successful year. Right now, I am feeling uncertain on what is to come.

My training in the fall went pretty well. For the most part, I was training better than last year and felt very excited for the coming season. I did a 10k "race" on January 2nd where I did in a controlled effort and walked 44:34 with a HR 7 beats lower average than I do most of my 20k races at a slower pace. This made me feel super optimistic for my hope to go sub 1:29 this year. A few days after the 10k I started having some pain in my hamsting. It didnt seem too serious at first, especially considering I had no pain on any of my easy workouts (5 days a week) but when I tried to go fast I had problems. It has now continued and its now 2 months later and I am still having problems. Seems like a long time and it is but during this time I have seen a lot of good things that has made me continue without being too worried. I have had a few of my best workouts ever and had no pain doing them, I have had 2-3 weeks during these 2 months with the pain gone and thought I was over the hump. A week before I was supposed to leave for Japan the pain came back when I tried to do a workout and I knew at this point that I had to cancel my trip and really take care of this problem for real.

I have been getting therapy 2-3 times a week since the beginning of January and nothing seems to be getting rid of this for good. I have now just completed a full week off training and since I have started back training a few days ago, the pain is still present. I am now in the process of getting an MRI to just make sure that the hamstring isnt torn. We are hopeful and think that it is just tendonosis, inflamation but we just want to rule anything else out. This is my first real injury in my whole career and so it has just been a learning process on how to deal with it.

In the mean time, I am trying to be positive and optimistic as the Olympic year is getting underway. I know that I can get in shape quickly and that I have become a totally different athlete these last few years and that will help me moving forward. Once I am pain free, I know that ill be able to get to where I was before all this happened. It is still early enough in the year that I have plenty of time to get ready. All I need is one GOOD race and that race is still just over 5 months away, the Olympics. Im fortunate that I already have my Olympic standard and all I have to do is prove fitness.

Not the update I would like to give but its an honest one that I sure others can relate to. Everyone is always looking for perfection in an Olympic year but the reality is that you cannot control everything and sometimes that is a good thing. I am trusting the process and believing that I am capable of great things this year but that it will be a different path than usual to get there. Thanks for all of the support.

Keep on walking,

Rachel