Starting all over...again.

2012 has been a year of starting over for me. Right now, before the end of the year, I find myself having to start over again.

I did my last training run on December 10. It was to run for 15 minutes. I did awesome on the treadmill and posted my fastest time ever.

Tuesday the 11th, I ended up having to skip my run and decided to do it on Wednesday. Except that when I woke up on Wednesday, I could barely walk because my back hurt so bad.

I've had this type of pain before and figured it would go away in a day or so and things would resume as normal. But, not so fast...

I could still barely walk on Thursday. Friday brought a bit less pain but still having trouble walking. I brought my heating pad to work on Thursday, and worked from home on Friday after a meeting so I could ice and heat my back when I wanted (the freezer at work doesn't work right, so keeping an ice pack there has proved problematic). I spent most of the weekend on the couch or at home, either icing/heating/stretching/moving around.

Sunday I woke up feeling much better. Monday was a bit worse, and Tuesday was a bit better. I didn't run at all until Tuesday, when I thought I could try a little bit. Having not run in a week, I had no idea what I was in for. I got on the treadmill and last 5 minutes.

Ugh. Are you serious? 5 minutes? I was actually doing 7 minute intervals before the pain and posting decent times (well, decent for me, still slow for lots of others).

Wednesday took me to the injury clinic at Playmakers, and the diagnosis is problems with my piriformis. Apparently, this muscle that's under the glutes is tight and causing pain across my back. I need to try to loosen it up, and that's not particularly easy.

So, I started over yesterday. I went on my first run yesterday. And man, was that rough. My lungs are protesting and I'm carrying around extra weight that packed on during the holidays (with no exercise to neutralize it). My back still has a small amount of pain, but I'm sure that'll go away once I can loosen up my piriformis.

During my run today (which is off schedule, but I want to try to get back up to where I was), I had a couple moments where I thought I was ridiculous for thinking I can run a half marathon when I can barely run 2 miles.

But, here I go again, starting my training over again this week before the new year.