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My groin pull/strain seems to be getting worse. After doing some research today, I'm going to play it smart and shut down my running for a few days. I ran a hard 4 miles last night with a slight discomfort. I've read that it is a BIG mistake to press through this injury. Therefore, I'm going to sit it out and just do some light stretching and rest. I have to many big races scheduled for early next year to let this injury stop me.

This sucks since it can cause my fitness level to take a hit. Oh well, I should to be able to rebound from that quickly. Hopefully it will not be over a week or so.

Better safe than sorry. You wouldn't want to break nothing down there.

In an effort to agree with your decision, without trying to hijack another one of your threads, I'm kinda thinking I'll be doing the same thing.

I'm definitely going to take tomorrow off but I was thinking today that I might not follow through with my LSD on Saturday. Honestly, this was a cutback week according to my schedule but I didn't really want it to be.

Joe, have you been stretching it and icing it? I would think you should work on doing that when you're home. Keep it stretched out and work on strengthening it when you feel better. I might have some exercises in my files for that, I'll check later and let you know. I used to be an athletic trainer so I have all sorts of goodies.

As far as pulled/strained groins go, I've had plenty of experience.

While you're off of the running, go ahead and see how core strengthening goes. Sit-ups/crunches may aggravate it, but if you were to go in for PT for this, I'd put a shiny nickel on it that they'll have you strengthening the surrounding muscle groups... Namely the abdomen.

Things like simple leg lifts (lie flat on back, legs straight, and lift them about 4" off the ground) are what you'll want to use... Then try and throw in some movement with that, like lifting 4" off for 10sec, spread legs (4" off the ground) for 10sec, back to middle for 10, and then lift them up to have your body make an "L". Can't remember what it's called, but lying on your back, with your hands to the side, lift your head/shoulders off the ground slightly, and then "peddle" your bicycle in the air... This one should hit upper and lower abs a bit.

Pretty much any ab or full-core strengthening you can do should help prevent this in the future. Since I've been back into it, I've been trying to do most of the above a few times a week, and I think I've only had a tight groin twice.

Hope ya have a speedy recovery.

I appreciate the information. I bought a heating pad last night, I'm wearing compression shorts for support today, and I did some light stretching last night. It feels better but I want to play it safe for sure. Stretching must become an integral part of my training.

The leg lifts you mention are my least favorite, but I agree with the reasoning and I'm definitely going to throw those into my routine. We did those when I was playing little league football and I despised them. I just hope I don't have any flash backs!

And the thing that probably gave me the most relief was frozen peas. I would wear two pair of compression shorts, and put a bag of frozen peas between them. Which can also be fun when someone shows up that doesn't know about the injury... "Does this look swollen to you?"

I prefer icing while lounging, and heat only before activity.