Last set of 400s puts me over the top...

I'm not exactly "injured", but am forestalling something serious by taking a few days off.

After completing the set of 400s with a final 69 seconds on Friday, I went out for an easy run on Saturday and my left leg seized up. I've never had that before: it was not like a cramp, just a complete tightening of my adductors and quads. I thought I was going to have to limp home, but it did ease off. On Sunday's 12-miler, it happened again, so yesterday I reported to my local ART specialist, Dr Sara Berg. ART - or Active Release Technique -- is my intervention of choice for this kind of tightness. Stretching doesn't get to it and I know if I try to run with it, something will tear.

Sara's assessment matched mine, which was a relief. My quads, adductors and even the hamstrings on that side are like rocks. She loosened things up and prescribed some serious sessions on the foam roller as homework.

Really, I should have listened to Abby. I'm always wary of the dark moon/new moon phase of the month; in my experience it's a comparatively low energy time for me, and when I register it on the calendar I put in extra rest. But I've been on a roll lately, hitting 40 miles a week (a lot for me), and I wanted to keep the streak going. Abby reminded me that in Astanga yoga, one of her expert fields, they tell people not to practise at dark moon or full moon. Of course, I didn't listen. If I'd taken the time off immediately after Friday I would probably have been all right.

Coincidentally, Saturday was also the time for an energy boost of a different sort. Last week I went and got my blood tested for serum ferritin. As some of you may remember, last year this test revealed my iron stores were down in the basement. Well, they were down again: this time to 65, nowhere near as bad as last year's low 30s, but well down from the high of 135-140 that I like to see them at. So, congratulating myself for catching it early this time, I was off to yet another practitioner, this time sports medicine specialist Dr Fran Mason, who set me up with an iron drip.

All this "maintenance" and it's only April! At least I'm blessed to be living in Boulder, where the number of world-class therapists matches the number of athletes :)