So I simply don't think I thought about it as much as I did this moring.  I'm just having an unusually good run and get that "I could run forever" feeling, which is shortly combined with a "I can just keep running faster & faster".  And as Murphy's law dictates my left hamstring starts tightening up a bit.

Now I've had itches or that feeling like a mosquito or some other nuisance has just bit me but this one is something I can't just slap or quickly scratch or whatever.  (Sweat in the eyeball doesn't count as I can easily wipe my eye if needed).  But it's one of those things I don't want to stop for cuz I don't want to lose the glorious momentum I feel I'm in the midst of.

So I think about just continuing to run, but as the brain works, I decide I have to do something so that I stop obsessing about it & change the current situation.  So I high-kick a couple times to shake things up but that only buys a few seconds relief.  This hammy is telling me it's not happy about my Christmas party margaritas from the night before and is probably reminding me I should've chased it with some good old H2O. (ok, hammy.  Sorry, bud)  Long story short.......nothing helps but after another mile or so, it goes away. (shrug).

All that crap to say.......What do you do if/when that kind of thing happens?  (If you say "stop & rub/itch/etc then pretend I said a race)  

I thought this was going to be a poo monster thread.

My body will sometimes send out random pain signals - what I call zappers. All of a sudden my left foot will feel like it's broken, but a minute later, it's fine.  Then a mile or two later, my knee or shin will send out sharp pain for a second or two, then it goes away. Or I'll get sciatic pain that will send an electric jolt down my leg and back.  A lot of those short term pains, I can ignore, because I know from experience that they aren't especially meaningful.  Pain that lasts, OTOH, I pay attention to.  My pelvic sfx started out as a twinge, but the next day, it was a continuous sharp pain with every step.  I have a hamstring issue going on now that is usually very low key, so I continue to run on it, but on my long run yesterday, pain spread from top to bottom of the hamstring and got bad enough I had to stop and walk.  Fortunately, I was close to the car at that point.  So for me, the dividing point is how long it lasts and how high a pain level.

Most runners will run on a broken leg thinking the pain will surely go away at some point.

I DID THAT!!  (Well, on a broken pelvis/sacrum that I didn't know was broken.  But still.)

If it's a sharp pain, I'm done.  Otherwise, I give it a mile or two and it usually sorts itself out.

 

Pffft.......whimp!!

 

Nothing a pair of compression shorts couldn't fix.

 

I was wearing compression tights!!  I'm a freak. 

I dropped out of a race Sunday (first time I have ever done hat in over 40 races) because my IT band was acting up to the point that my gait was affected. Many races I'd try to piah through but this one wasn't a very important race to me and I was able to see the bigger picture. On a training run, if something hurts enough to start changing my gait, I will always stop. I'd much rather lose those training miles that day than lose much more down the road.

My right hoof began to ache around the 1.5 mile mark of my run this morning. I thought about this thread and briefly considered stopping but ran through it.