Setbacks

So just a quick short post after a long core workout and a real long swim. It's looking more and more like the 2014 cross country season will never be. There are seven spots to be filled for the team to compete in the championship races - the OUAs (Ontario Championships) and the CIS (Canadian Champs), and one more race left in the non-championship season at Queens where the OUAs will be held to essentially prove yourself to the coaches that you deserve a spot in that top-7. After getting some seriously painful and deep to the bone manual therapy, bruising the muscle from the outside-in to try to stimulate some tissue healing, I felt like I would be able to start running on Monday and maybe get one good speed session before Queens. I was planning on then making the trip to Queens with essentially no training, and run like I had nothing to lose, which I don't. I would run up at the front with the fastest runners in the country from Guelph, and just try to hold on as long as I could. If I blew up then so be it, but in the process I would show the coaches that with two weeks of actual training before the OUAs I would be able to run with the top-guns in the sport. Monday came, and it's amazing how sometimes optimism can be such a dangerous thing. I woke up and my hip was actually the worst it had been in the last 3 days. Just tried a few quicker steps on my walk over to school, not a chance running was going to happen. The leg was bad, the limp was back. Maybe tomorrow I thought, maybe just an easy run. Woke up, nope. Not better. Limped over to campus, and was back in the water, for yet another swim, 16 days in a row of swimming, no kicking, no progress in the leg. It's looking more and more like the season is over, and the injury may be much worse than I anticipated. Maybe it will be another week, maybe another 4. Regardless, I'm 99.9% sure Queens is not happening, and therefore OUAs, and CIS in Newfoundland is not happening. Right now I really need something to put on the calendar. I need something to look ahead to, to give me a plan, or a purpose. Right now, I don't have any direction to training. Quite frankly, I don't know why I'm still training. What am I staying in shape for, why am I waking up at 6 to go to the pool and swim 200 lengths at a time. As much as I enjoy swimming, it's a constant reminder of the fact that I'm not running. I actually thought last night, maybe on December 20th I can run the Lookout Mountain 50 Mile race just to give me something to think and train towards, cause at the moment I'm stuck, spinning my tires in the present.