Down with a lower back strain or is it a sprain?

"A strain is a muscle or tendon injury; a sprain is a ligament injury. Back strain is also referred to as pulled back muscles." I came across this at Bigbackpain while researching lower back pain on the net. And the reason for spending the Sunday evening doing this research is to assure myself that I will recover in time to run the Kaveri Trail Marathon on 19th October. While stretching yesterday morning, I pulled my lower back muscle on the left side. This muscle has been strained a few times before but this time it seems to be much more severe and coming so close to a race has made this one of the most depressing weekends in recent memory. After the 50K clocked last week, this week was anyway planned to be an easy one with maximum of 30K run. I did 20K between Wednesday and Friday and was planning to do an easy one at the Hash run off Old Madras road on Sunday afternoon. After straining the back yesterday morning I have been pretty much resting the weekend and also taking pain killers. I feel much better Sunday evening but still not fully recovered. Apprehensive about running the KTM next Sunday and fearing the worst(need to take an extended break from running and inability to continue my '12 in 12 at 50 endeavour') has made me very irritated - with the family at home bearing the brunt of the irritation. It is always challenging to maintain a balance between work, family life and long distance running and injury only adds to this- more on this in a future post...