Going slower than I’d like

I injured myself in the Jingle Bells 5K in early December (left piriformis and left hamstring). You might recall that I was also supposed to run the Hangover Half on January 1. In a way, I was saved by the extreme cold because honestly I would have run it if the race had been held, and I absolutely should not have run it. So that ended well.

Right before Christmas, I saw a physical therapist to see what I needed to do to recover and I’ve been going once a week since then. Recovery is slow, which is typical with hamstring issues, even though I’m following instructions and doing the exercises she’s prescribed (also not doing the exercises she’s said are off limits for now).

Three weeks ago, she suggested dry needling for the piriformis issue. She thinks (and I agree) that most of my issues stem from the piriformis—it just won’t release and so the rest of the posterior chain on the left side is also clenching up. Normally, I’m very skeptical of anything well outside Western medicine, but I work with a women who runs a lot of marathons and has also had serious pain with her piriformis. She’s the one who referred me to this physical therapy practice, and she’s had dry needling done and got a lot of relief from it. So two weeks ago, I had the dry needling done.

Let me just say that dry needling is not fun. It’s not painful, at least not pain in the sense that I normally think of pain. Having had seven major abdominal surgeries plus my tonsils and adenoids removed plus sinus surgery that involved drilling bone out of my nose, I’m well acquainted with pain and this wasn’t pain. It was, however, very unpleasant. The PT placed the needles into the muscle (three different locations) and triggered a spasm. But the spasm felt very alien because it’s very clear that my own muscles weren’t doing the spasm. I don’t know how else to explain it other than that. And the spasms are quite intense and uncomfortable. My PT warned me that I would feel like I’d done 100 squats on the left leg the next day, and she was not kidding.

At home that night after the needling, I wasn’t so sure having that done was a good idea. And definitely the next day, I was really not sure about it. But then mid-morning on the second day, I realized that it didn’t hurt nearly to the point of tears to sit in a chair. Well, that was real progress.

I’m scheduled to run a 10K on February 10—this is the replacement race for the canceled half marathon earlier this year. At this point, my goals will be pretty humble:

• Don’t injure myself—most important goal.
• Finish the race—so that reinforces the first goal because I can’t finish if I hurt myself.
• If possible, keep my pace under 10 minutes per mile. If I were running this in December before I hurt myself, the pace would be lower. But that’s not my current reality.

And that leads me to tonight, when I’m having a second session done in hopes that the muscles more fully release. I’m not looking forward to how I feel afterwards this evening, or tomorrow when I have to sit in a four-hour meeting (!!) but boy I sure hope Saturday I’m feeling much improved.

Harder than it looks

When I was 32 and still a professional musician, I developed tendonitis in my right thumb from playing. I went to physical therapy, and my PT said you need to stop playing to let this heal up, otherwise it’s going to get a lot worse and you might not recover. I said well I’m in the middle of a lot of rehearsals and a bunch of concerts, I will see you in May (it was February).

And those concerts were the last I ever played.

My thumb did indeed get a lot worse. The tendonitis spread to the back of my hand, to my elbow and up to my shoulder. I couldn’t even sign my name on a check for about five months—I lost the grippy motion you need to hold a pen or pencil. I went to PT religiously, did all the rehab exercises, tried to play again and nope. Flat could not do it.

I still have issues with my right hand. My handwriting is so bad I can’t always read it. I’ve had to learn to use a mouse with my left hand so that I can give my right hand a break. It’s been 25 years and this is my normal now.

Patron saint for runners--
thanks Mom!

So I’m taking this piriformis issue seriously. I got a recommendation for a PT place that works with athletes and went for a screening last night. Holy cow that hurt. She did a piriformis release on both sides and that was incredibly painful. But it helped. She also gave me a couple of exercises and dynamic stretches to do. They hurt, but I can tell it’s not the “OMG stop you are damaging yourself” pain. I go back next week for a full evaluation.

In the meantime, I’ll hold off running until next Tuesday. That gives me a full week of no running. I’m still planning on running my half marathon, I know logically I have all the fitness and conditioning I need. But mentally it’s hard. I’ve also had to acknowledge I won’t meet the 200k distance challenge for December (I use Strava, which is sort of like FaceBook for runners and cyclists and you can sign up for all sorts of challenges every month). That’s hard too, because I hate not meeting those kinds of challenges.

But the reality is if I don’t stop and heal up, then I run the risk of a more serious injury. I’d like to think I learned something from that career ending injury 25 years ago
.

A pain in the butt

My own that is, at least on the left side. I think it’s from upping my weight workout and sadly, the discomfort isn’t isolated to just the booty area. I find it funny (not haha either) that pain refers itself elsewhere, as if to spread the joy. So in addition to the pain in my own rear, I feel it at the top of the outside of my left calf up by my knee. And it hurts to sit and walk, but oddly I have no pain going up and down stairs, nor do I have any back pain at all. And my knees are fine too.

I suspect it’s my piriformis muscle, which can get all clenched up and then squeeze the sciatic nerve. It’s painful enough that I couldn’t run Friday—I tried, but it was just too painful. Then Saturday night, returning to bed from a bathroom trip, I smacked the everloving crap out of my upper thigh, same leg of course, on the post of the bed’s footboard. Yeowch that HURT plus the force of the blow made my left hip feel really weird and not in a good way.

Anyway, one way to help relax the piriformis muscle, aside from getting stronger and stretching more (all of which I’m working on), is to roll that part of the bum on a tennis or lacrosse ball. It’s not a pleasant feeling to roll on a ball because basically you’re rolling super tight muscles on a hard object. But I’m willing to spend a few dollars on some tennis balls if it will help. And I doubt it can hurt, or at least not any more than I’m hurting right now.