Adductor brevis and Adductor longus

During 2007 St.Patrick's 10 km race I was flying over icy course - 40% of the course was pure ice. Snow would melt during the day and freeze during the night, so in the morning, this nature generated ice rink was in a perfect shape. What I didn't know was that during the race, I was compensating to keep my balance using my adductor muscles. I also didn't know that these micro moves could actually tear muscle fiber.

I only felt pain in my groin area 2 weeks after the race. I tried to do my usual training run, but there was too much pain. I experienced my first big adductor muscles strain.

It took more than a year to recover properly - I tried running in October 2007, but without success. I had to stop my running completely, and in the meantime to work on numerous strengthening exercises.

My physiotherapist Glenda told me that it would take "a while" to recover. I already wrote about that in one of my posts from 2008.

I only started running outdoors in July 2008. That was the first time when I didn't feel any pain. It felt great to be back to my x-country routine, and to experience elements of outdoor running. I was very happy about it.

Ever since that injury, I've never been able to get back to my best running. It took a while to get back to routine, to build strength and endurance, and it took me long time to start enjoying racing again.

There is no need to mention that I've been considerably slower than before the injury. I've slowed down 7-10 %, and as it might look as a fraction of time, it is frustrating to realize that all training resulted with struggling and being so slow.

This happened to my right leg. At that time I hoped that it will never happen again.

Unfortunately, it did happen again. It was not Murphy's Law, this time it was a culmination and result of other injuries that I didn't pay close attention to.

I injured my left leg.

I crashed in November 2009 while mountain biking, by miscalculating a ramp - I went over my head, did a salto or somersault. As I am not build for such acrobatic moves I crashed heavily. I could hear how my lower back muscles 'snapped', contracted, protecting my spine from even worse injury. Well, I got up, stretched a bit and continued my bike ride. I pretended to be tough.

Next day my lower back was....let's say... not in good shape. I kept stretching it, icing it, but I didn't go see Glenda. I thought it will heal itself. I even went to Bikram yoga, as in the past, it would help me to fix my back ailments.

I also kept running throughout the winter. While running, my back didn't bother me, but I noticed that my left hip and gluteal muscles were getting very tight. This was painful when I was doing my long runs. However, the pain would diminish after I was done with my workout.

During one of 'famous' long runs, I felt a bit of pain in my left groin area, where adductor muscles enable your leg to move. I didn't pay attention to that.

I wish I did.

This time I screwed up my left groin area adductor muscle(s). "Adductor Longus" was a mean culprit. Adductor Brevis was involved as well.

However, I kept running, as I was focused on my goal - Midnight Sun Half Marathon in Tromso, Norway, in June.

In February, there was much more pain, and I was able to do only 65% of my planned training. I did go to see Glenda, but she took some time off, so Andrew took care of my injury.

He started with my lower back, and it took 4 weeks to experience better feeling there (no pain). Then, he moved to the hip area - it took another4 weeks to fix that.

I continued running (beside that I did all of my skiing, including master racing), but I did only 40% of my training.

At the end of April, I knew I won't be able to do my planned half-marathon in June/July. However, I was still able to do some shorter races, again St.Patrick's day, and all X-country races. And I did them.

I wish I didn't do them. It would've probably helped me to start healing process earlier, and by now, to start some training.

So, I kept running. I did a race every week, and then I would run twice between races. In the meantime I would go to therapy.

It was interesting that I was faster on every race I did this year. I would feel pain only after 7, 8 km, so during shorter races, there was no pain.

Every time Andrew asked me was it getting better, and my answer was that: "It was not". He was puzzled. I thought that it would heal itself, with Andrew's help.

But it didn't.

I stopped running last Monday. Completely. I won't run until May 17th,when I will take my corporate challenge team for a training run. It will be a good test to see if there is a pain.

I am hoping that this injury is not that severe as one from 2007. I was still able to push hard and to race, to be competitive, and that's different than 3 years ago.

I will probably take an extended break until August. I want to give it sufficient time to heal.