Yesterday morning I got up early and gathered my things for a hiking trip with my friend Jennings and 5-7 other people. This trip has been in the works for months-- he's getting married in August and this is what some of his friends came up with for a bachelor party and I was stoked for it. The plan was to leave early Saturday morning and drive up to Mt. Adams, hike to the summit and spend the night at one of the cabins up there (Crag or Grey Knob I think), do another short day hike in that area on Sunday, then have people split up and either head back to the cars or spend another night in the mountains at a different camp. I love hiking, especially overnight hikes, but I'm definitely not a good hike planner. From a planning perspective, I'd definitely be riding the coattails of some much more experienced backpackers in the group. But that's beside the point.
Over the past month I've been worried, but maintained a very real confidence that I would be able to do this hike despite the hip/groin pains I continued to experience. I went on a short hike about a month ago and that didn't go very well (needed to turn around after a mile or so), but I was feeling much better overall and only a very small part of me imagined it wouldn't be possible. I continued to feel good about it until the moment I put my pack on with barely anything in it. Right away I felt a very unwelcome strain on both my hips. The way the weight of the pack sat on my hips was the perfect recipe for aggravating my injury. At least while I'm running, I don't feel the pain until afterwards, sometimes not even until the next day. This backpack situation wasn't like that-- this was fairly immediate discomfort. I tested it out by climbing some stairs and walking back down to see if things would get worse, and big surprise, they did. I literally spent hours debating on what to do, obsessing over every possible outcome if I were to go. I considered having other people in the group carry all of my things so I would be pack-less, but this didn't appeal to me for a number of reasons. I hated the idea of needing to turn around in any situation, and at the very least knew that I'd be obsessing over any discomfort for the duration of the trip, which would have huge negative implications on my overall level of joy. Ultimately I think it was the mental side of it that really broke me. Despite the fact that I may have ultimately been able to handle it (nobody knows...) the key was that I didn't have the confidence in my body's ability to do something that would normally be so routine. This reality, no matter how much I tried to weigh the different options, overpowered everything else. There's no way I would be able to do it if I don't have the confidence in the beginning. No amount of mental trickery could get me to spin things around in a more positive light, I just couldn't stop obsessing over the ever haunting strain in my groin and hip. I had to bag it.
I spent the rest if the night feeling pretty badly for myself. I drank two ciders, watched part of the new Godzilla movie (entertaining, if nothing else) and went to bed. Today (Saturday) has slowly gotten better from the moment I woke up (in a fog). I took a long walk into town and visited the Farmers Market for a burrito and through town for a coffee and started feeling a little more at peace with the reality of my situation. It's cliché to say this, but it is what it is and there's only so much I can do about it right now. Ultimately I know that deep down this is the right decision, it's just unbelievably frustrating when the pains of this injury infest their way into other aspects of my daily life outside of running. Blah.
I'm not defeated yet. In the grand scheme of things in life this will be a small blip. That doesn't make me feel much better in the moment, but hey. I'll get through it eventually and I'm sure the memories of the past year will seem fond (in a way) as a time when I didn't have to worry about running twice, three times a day, mind and body broken down, barely able to get my shorts off before collapsing into bed, the prospect of running again already looming, no amount of food able to satisfy my needs, training, training, training, unable to even quantify in words the anguish that is the daily grind of that life.
But what I wouldn't do for that right now....
Cheers,
AH
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