Don't get old if you can help it

It's Hell getting old.  Maybe I should say "older," since, compared to most of my patients, I'm not really old.  Some days, though, I definitely feel older than others.  Take yesterday, for example.  Following my plan of running less, but running faster, I headed out on the track for a ladder of 400, 600, 800, 1200, 800, 600, 400 all with a 400 RI.  Because I was a bit busy in the morning, I didn't do this at Noon as I had planned, but ended up on the Steilacoom HS track at 5:00 PM in the dark.  Which was okay.  There were some benches and barriers on the track, but nothing that I would be running into, I hoped, even if it was pretty dark.  It was nearly a full moon, but since the clouds were hiding it, there wasn't much light, except for the spotlight on the flag at the far end of the field.  That, actually, looked pretty cool. 

So, off I went on a 2 mile w/u.  I was wearing my Newtons; I had thought about using racing flats, but hoped that I could still make the intervals easily wearing training flats.  At the 1.5 mile mark, I did some 100 m strides, and didn't feel too bad.  However, I did notice my left hip (more correctly, groin) was acting a bit unhappy.  I had tweaked it during the Turkey Trot (see previous entry for the details), but it hadn't been too bothersome until now.  Still, I didn't think it would be a problem. 

As soon as I started the 400, I knew that my groin was a bigger problem than I expected.  It got progressively more painful after the first 100.  By the time I came around to the start/finish, I wondered if I would be able to continue the workout.  I was having problems planting and pushing off and I definitely couldn't stride out on my left.  To make things even more problematic, my watch was all messed up.  So, while I think I made the interval (should have been 1:29), I couldn't tell.  During my 400 recovery jog, I thought about my predicament.  I decided to run the 600 and see what happened.  I also thought that I fixed the problem with my watch.  I hit the button to start the 600 and took off.  Immediately, I realized that my leg was not going to let me finish the workout (at least at the intervals I wanted).  I chopped my stride, ran the rest of the lap fairly gingerly and stopped at the 400.  And it was over.  To add insult to injury, when I looked at my watch to see what my first 400 time was, I couldn't get it to recall. 

I guess I'm not running for a little while.  I missed my target of 100K for the month, but that's not a huge deal; it was just a motivator.   I'm going to see if I can still ride and swim.  Right now, I'm walking kind of like I just got off a horse.  Seems that things like this never used to happen to me 20 years ago, when I was younger and faster.