Fail.

PM: 50 min. ellip. w/intervals
~5 min. run
~2 mile walk

Let's just get straight to it: I tried to run this afternoon and my hip still hurts. It's not an unbearable pain, and if someone put a gun to my head and told me to run a 5k I could do it, but it's still considerably far from where it needs to be. To classify my reaction as discouraged, frustrated and/or upset would be a gross understatement. For now this means I'm back to the elliptical and the pool and the doctor for at least another week. Maybe two. Hell, maybe a dozen for all I know.

As you can imagine, this is disappointing to me for several reasons. For one, I feel like I've been patient--one might say uncharacteristically so--in paying my due diligence the past three weeks. I've been doing everything I should be and nothing I shouldn't in order to facilitate recovery, so the fact that my hip doesn't seem to appreciate this at all is quite maddening. Add to this the realization--which, I can assure you, I think about on a regular basis--that I'm losing a little bit more fitness with each passing day. Fitness I gained over the summer. Fitness I acquired while at the same time being overly careful not to run too much, too fast or too hard. I can't think of a single day in the past four months when I've felt as though I'd overdone it or pushed too far. Instead I was content to bide my time and keep things under control, knowing I'd have all the time in the world to get fit once I got back to Charlotte. And then I injured myself by...driving? Riding in the car? Seriously??

Don't get me wrong; I know there are bigger people than me with bigger problems than me. I know it's just running. I get all that. But for someone who is ever the perfectionist, who is always used to having all aspects of my life under control thankyouverymuch, who still remembers the disappointment of watching my entire track season slip away less than six months ago...well, it hurts. Half of me wants to just stop cross-training altogether and say screw it. What's the point? Is it really keeping me even remotely fit? The other half of me wants to do twice as much as I'm doing now, to go 40 minutes when I only want to go 30, to do three hard workouts a week when I'd really be happier doing none. I'm not one for mediocrity and I'm not one for wasting time, so it seems as though I need to pick a side and commit to it. And while I'm at it, I should probably buck up and stop feeling sorry for myself.

No promises just yet. But it's good to have goals, right?