Setback

Everything was going along smoothly, until it wasn't.  I got up to running 2 days, then 1 day off.  I was increasing all my exercises...but my back wasn't responding.  One day I woke up with a kink in my neck.  Figure I was doing too many push-ups with my feet on the exercise ball.  I took that day off running and did more stretching.  All that stretching without exercising seemed to make my back unstable...so I took another day off.  By then my neck and back were so bad that I had to make an emergency appointment with Matt my Physical Therapist.  He worked on my back and shoulder gave me some homework....

So I've been doing my homework.  I'm back to running 2 days on and 1 day off.  My runs are still going awesome.  My heart rate has come down while my cadence work has done wonders.  I'm pretty consistently running 170-176 cadence easy cheesy.  Doesn't feel all that weird anymore either.

I went for PT today and we found that my back just isn't responding.  The funny things we've noticed... 

1) When my back tightens up my knee hurts.   Regardless of activity or inactivity. 

2) Doing a "suitcase carry" or "bottoms up kettlebell carry" exercise almost immediately helps my back.  too many however or too much running and my QL locks up and I'm leaning right a bit.

3) At around 28 minutes of running (I currently run for 31-34 minutes for my loop) my left hip fatigues and I can feel that instead of springing off the ground, my right leg is catching me, sinking in, then having to muscles me up.  That I'm sure comes with some hip tilt and then causes my right leg/knee to dive in.  When that happens my form has basically gone bad.  Keeping the high rpm combats this because my stride is shorter, but not completely...and I can only maintain the high cadence for so long.  So for now we'll keep the run duration right around 30 minutes and just add more runs per week.

My functional strength measure ok for everything.  My form on the treadmill looks great... but I still get the neck kink with too many exercises and right QL lock with too many.  So today he introduced me to dry needling.  This is where he takes acupuncture needles and jams them through the skin, then moves around here and there poking and aggravating the muscles.  He said this causes them to send acid and enzymes there to repair them, and blood to wash away everything.  Basically attacking the adhesion's like massage.  Holy hell!!  rank this right up there with the dentists drill.  He worked on my right quad for about 10 minutes and I was just about to my limit when he graciously moved on to my hip and back.  Hip and back didn't bother me nearly as much.  A few places really seemed to release things.  I'm sore, but my range of motion and strength improved pretty dramatically really quickly.  The leg though.  Dang!!! I'm barely able to kneel down.  My quad is pretty sore.

We'll see what that does for me.   Setback after setback....but at least I'm running.  I may be the slowest man slogging through the woods but I'm getting out there and enjoying it....

maybe I'm in last place....but hopefully I can pull a Waddle.