honesty time
Sigh.
So I know all my posts have been HAPPY JOY EATING DRUNK VACATION YAYZIES for the past month or so. And that's been going on, but that's not all that has been going on, and I guess I have to talk about the crappy stuff too.
I'm not better.
I got hurt in March. Healed through March, started running again in bits and small pieces at the end of April. Did a 70.3 - not the greatest rehab strategy ever, but I did it - and then took a week off from running. I did a couple of very short and slow runs while on vacation, and when I got back last week I started going back to track workouts. I only did a miniaturized version of the workout, but that alone was enough to piss off whatever in my body was getting pissed off way back in March. My psoas is so tight it is visibly sticking out of my stomach, my IT band on that side is tight, 843 tiny little hip muscles are tight, my adductor once again has a death grip on my leg, and it's all starting to pull on my butt, which is what bothered me all winter in the first place. Welcome to the land of Not Better. I should also probably mentioned that I was out of alignment every other day from the time I did the race - not surprising - until about a week ago. Now I'm only going out every third day. Not encouraging, after 3 months.
When I hit the PT office after my body totally lost its shit back in March, it was determined that the lower part of my core wasn't holding my sacrum in place, so I was given lots and lots of exercises specific to strengthening that part of my core. I have done those exercises, increasing their difficulty every week or so - about 15 minutes worth - at least once a day since March. So that's not it. It was also determined that my gluteus medius had never worked a day in its life, so I was given an exercise to strengthen that, which I have done almost every single day since then. My PT said that she could tell from looking at some race pictures that I had weak glutes.
So what she see is that my knees knock together. They do this because my hips are collapsing inwards (harder to see). My hips collapse inwards because my gluteus medius isn't pulling them back with as much strength as my hip flexors are pulling them forward. This is also why my hip flexors get tight, because they are doing all the work (I get pissy when this happens at work too). And it also contributes to my pronation (in the upper right picture you can really see the stress of the plant of my foot). This all makes complete sense to me.
But apparently it is still happening.
I'm frustrated. The pisser of it all is that it honestly doesn't bother me one bit while I am running, which makes it even harder to deal with, but the tightness/pinching/weirdness that goes on while I'm not running is not ignorable. And I fear that if I just let these things slide like I did in the winter, they will snowball into another actual kind of devastating injury. But I'm tired of wasting hundreds of dollars and hours upon hours in physical therapy. I'm not really sure where to go from here. A friend suggested a gait analysis, which I think might be a good step, but I want to track down someone who SUPER DUPER kicks ass at it and can give me the how and why to fix it. I also made an appointment at an injury and performance sports clinic to see what they have to say. What I don't need is to be back in PT 3 times a week. I think I know my body well enough by now to not need to check in that often, and I definitely know I'll do the work on my own.
So there you go. No snowballs and bluebells of joy today, just garden-variety complaining, friends.
So I know all my posts have been HAPPY JOY EATING DRUNK VACATION YAYZIES for the past month or so. And that's been going on, but that's not all that has been going on, and I guess I have to talk about the crappy stuff too.
I'm not better.
I got hurt in March. Healed through March, started running again in bits and small pieces at the end of April. Did a 70.3 - not the greatest rehab strategy ever, but I did it - and then took a week off from running. I did a couple of very short and slow runs while on vacation, and when I got back last week I started going back to track workouts. I only did a miniaturized version of the workout, but that alone was enough to piss off whatever in my body was getting pissed off way back in March. My psoas is so tight it is visibly sticking out of my stomach, my IT band on that side is tight, 843 tiny little hip muscles are tight, my adductor once again has a death grip on my leg, and it's all starting to pull on my butt, which is what bothered me all winter in the first place. Welcome to the land of Not Better. I should also probably mentioned that I was out of alignment every other day from the time I did the race - not surprising - until about a week ago. Now I'm only going out every third day. Not encouraging, after 3 months.
When I hit the PT office after my body totally lost its shit back in March, it was determined that the lower part of my core wasn't holding my sacrum in place, so I was given lots and lots of exercises specific to strengthening that part of my core. I have done those exercises, increasing their difficulty every week or so - about 15 minutes worth - at least once a day since March. So that's not it. It was also determined that my gluteus medius had never worked a day in its life, so I was given an exercise to strengthen that, which I have done almost every single day since then. My PT said that she could tell from looking at some race pictures that I had weak glutes.
But apparently it is still happening.
So there you go. No snowballs and bluebells of joy today, just garden-variety complaining, friends.