Posts Tagged ‘active release techniques’

I’ve lived here since 2002 and for the most part, I like it a lot.  It’s beautiful, old (Olde), I love my neighborhood but it also has a few annoyances particular to the locale:  Philadelphia has a city tax that eats a shitload of your money (which is why a lot of people live in NJ and commute), the liquor stores are state-run so more expensive (which is why, if you’re smart, you take stealth missions to NJ for booze) and I just found out today, I cannot get an A.R.T session for the same injury without a doctor’s prescription, regardless that I pay completely out of pocket, because I’ve surpassed the 30-day window.

Backtracking a day, yesterday’s run wasn’t awful or painful but it followed a rest day, so I naively expected to be tangibly improved.  Granted, I was tired from a long job and it was windy, but my leg was not magically done and frankly, I’m sick of noticing or thinking about it.  So when I got home, I called the ART lady to finish the thing off.  Appt made for 1pm today.  Cool.

Forward to today, I have a great run: 7 miles, a few around 8:00/mi, feeling the best I have post-injury.  In fact, had this run happened yesterday, I wouldn’t have even made an ART appt.  Still, I’m excited at the prospect because I know that with a little therapeutic mauling, it’ll be over for good.

50 minutes before the appointment, I get a call from the office asking if I’m going in for the original injury.  When I say Yes, she tells me that, due to some stupid law called Direct Access, I can’t have the session without a referral.  Nice.  The therapy place isn’t in my HMO network, and even if it was, doubtful I’d have been able to get it taken care of with less than an hour to the appt.

I’m not freaking out because today’s run was so good, but I’m pissed and disappointed – it takes a lot for me to seek help.   Also, there are very few ART or Graston people in Philly and since I have to rent a Zipcar to deal with it, I’m not going to find someone else.  Hopefully the week will continue to play out well on the heels of today.

Edit: Turns out Direct Access is actually a Federal Law and a bunch of states do this.  They make it a “feature” that they allow you to seek PT without a prescription for 30 days.  Maybe I’m pissed at Pennsylvania a little less now.  Maybe.  Back to hating the damn health system as usual.

Baby’s First Wheels!
I’m old (Olde), and it’s taken me this long to figure out that traveling with a duffel is dumb.  Every time I go anywhere, I look longingly at the other travelers with their handy little wheeled bags while I do the Quasimodo carry.  But at the same token, I always think “how do they fit anything in those?”  After Vegas though, I vowed to get a wheeled bag, no matter the sacrifice to size.

Well blow me down, I found the coolest bag.  It’s roomy, has a lot of variations on how you can pack it, is half hard-case, half duffel (expandable, at that) and lastly, it comes in different colors – easier to spot than black.  It was a little pricey but it’ll last for years, so I figure it’s worth it. First use: San Diego in April.  yay!

Blog Feed
I finally got rid of my original domain name (girl-in-motion.com) but I still have about 90 subscribers still using it in their blog feeds or blog rolls.  If you’ve noticed that the last post in your blog reader (or however you subscribe to this thing) has stopped updating, you’ll want to check that the link is girlinmotion.com (without dashes) to keep getting the latest boring, complaining, whining crap from me.

After cutting Sunday’s run a half mile in due to pain, the next day, I took a different stance.  I remembered the ART lady said it’d be unlikely that I’d hurt myself further so I decided to treat the situation like a rehab patient. I see those people in the park, one guy with a dead leg basically, and he does his daily rehab walks though it’s obviously painful, but he works through it to get better.

Now I’m not someone who’d say “run through pain!”, quite the opposite, but this particular thing, because I’d had it looked at and believed I had a clue, seemed like something I could manage.  My feeling was that as long as I took it reeeeaal slow, it wouldn’t be much different than walking anyway.

So Monday morning I went on a run, or rather…a hobble, at first.  Honestly, all I could do at the beginning were little mincing steps at over 10min/mi.  I stopped a couple times to stretch and by mile 3, things started loosening up substantially and eventually, I was able to jog like a normal person, albeit 9:xxs.  I went for 5 miles but when I was almost home, realized I was going to pass someone I’d end up having to stop and chat with and I wasn’t in the mood, so I detoured and ended up with 5.8mi.  The legs felt surprisingly good by the end and the feeling lasted the rest of the day and next morning.

Because of that, this morning I expected to feel much better at the start of my run, but ended up having another rickety slow start.  It seemed like my leg needed to be cracked somewhere but despite my preparations before the run (heating pad, light stretches, dynamic warmup) I couldn’t find release.  However, this time it worked itself out much faster and once it did, I became my old runnerly self.  What joy to glance at my Garmin and see 8:30, then 8:20, etc.  My last mile was a comfortable 8:07.  The run was 7.25mi total.

I did have a funny encounter at the start of the run with some dude who was not going to be Chicked, no way, no how.  It was in my 2nd mile,  jogging at around 9:30 pace and I pass this guy covered in sweat, who immediately passes back but stays just in front of me.  I’m speeding up a tad because I’m feeling better, so I pass him again and while I’m doing it, he speeds up so we’re running next to each other for a bit, till he finally inches in front again.  This happened a couple more times till I finally left him in the dust (at 9:15/mi pace for gods sake).  I was itching to say “I’m injured, what’s your excuse?” but held my tongue.

It also made me smile to think what a confusing sight I must be for the regulars in the park.  Going out with a mincing shuffle, a look of both consternation and concentration on my face, then on the return, happy and loose-limbed with a huge smile from ear-to-ear.

As for the injury and why it’s been such a bear, there was a helluva lot of stuff affected: my sartorius, gracilis, inner hammy (both along the length and the pes anserinus) then outer quad and IT band.  I believe this is why I’ve had those balance issues, everything surrounding my knee was whacked!  Also, I’m sure if I made another appointment with the ART lady, she’s unstick whatever is causing the rickety starts, but it’d be $75 and since work’s been slow the last few weeks, I’m fine to finish up on my own.

Unrelated but for the record, it was hugely relieving that 2 of my extremely sane friends and a new friend (blog commenter) all mentioned they’d had the same dizzying feeling with dappled light that I described in the last post, so I just wanted to announce that I’m not a hypochondriac loony tune.  Or at least, not when it comes to dappled light (which hasn’t been a problem since that one incident).

Lastly, I’m kinda sorta playing around with the possibility of doing that 5k this Saturday.  If I can get over the rickety start in the next couple days then I might.  I won’t be fast, that’s for sure, but looking at the results of the last couple races I missed…the 50 year-old first placers were 24:xx.  Hell, the winning 40 year-olds for both were 23:xx!  But Saturday’s race has a crappy prize (a medal) though they do supply a great breakfast.  The thing is, do I care about a win or do I care about my time?  Well, of course I only really care about my time, so it wouldn’t be satisfying at all in that regard.  But maybe I should do it just to do it (and since I paid for the damn thing), but maybe it’ll be too soon after the injury…  Eh, I’ll see.

Cliff Notes: I do not have a stress fracture or MS though obviously, I do have an overly active imagination (MS really did pop into my head after Tuesday’s fiasco, more on that below).  All I have is some tendinosis and a ton of crunchy scar tissue in the exact spot my detective skills had predicted (sartorius), which has not even been a main source of pain for weeks.  Gratifying to know that I actually do have a clue about my own anatomy.  But let’s go back a few days to a very black cloud…

The Test Run
After resting 4 days, I went for a 5-miler on Tuesday.  Pain-wise, much improved, but my leg was extremely weak…to an alarming degree.  Unsettled, uncomfortable and extremely disheartened, I turned around at mile 1.5 to make it a 3-miler, it was clear I was not at all healed.

Heading back, I came to the tiny hill I zoom down every time I go running (at the rock climbing wall, for you locals) and as I neared the descent I had a moment of near panic, an overwhelming feeling that if I ran down the thing, I’d lose balance and topple over.  I paused, then gingerly walked down like a drunk doing an alcohol test.

At the bottom, I stopped, put my hands on my knees and thought “what just happened?”  I couldn’t decide if something psychological was going on, if I’d suddenly been struck with vertigo or if my brain was instinctively protecting my leg or what.  All I knew was that it was freaky and depressing.

I start running again towards home and after a bit, my leg feels stronger, less gimpy as it goes.  So I detour around the museum and, feeling more confident, decide to retrace my steps, return to that little hill and run down it like a normal person, just to put that moment of weirdness to bed.

I get back to the spot, run up (no problem), turn at the top expecting a normal jog down and…lose it again.  I make a “whoa” sound and have to steady myself.  Then I carefully walk to the bottom and again, stop to regain composure.  I finish the run with a ton of concern weighing on me.

Afterwards, I reasoned that my leg had likely become a wet noodle from spending 4 days binging on self-massage and trigger-point rolling (like a foam roller but harder).  I told my Facebook pals that I’d try another test run the next day and if it wasn’t better, I’d seek professional help.  But 20 minutes later, I was on the phone with the Physical Therapy place making an ART appointment (Active Release Techniques) for Thursday morning (today).  No time to waste.

I also decided that I would not run before the appointment; it would have been a stupid idea, gaining nothing, delaying the situation and likely freaking me out further. Turns out I didn’t have a choice anyway, my quad ached from the moment I woke up.

The ART session
My ART lady is Brandi, and I love her madly.

I’ve never gone to a Physical Therapist before, nor to a Chiropractor or even been professionally massaged.  I’ve always been an “unless we’re having sex, don’t be digging your paws into me” kind of person.  So I had no idea what to expect, though she did come highly recommended by my friend who’s had a lifetime of sports-related injuries so I knew I would literally be in good hands.

I won’t go into detail, but she was extraordinarily generous with her time, answered a zillion questions, manipulated and caused me exquisite pain, gave me stretches and exercises galore and most importantly, put my mind completely at ease after a month of worrying about this thing.  She finished with some kinesio tape and said I can run tomorrow!  I should plan on a short one but if it feels ok, I can extend it a bit.  She said it’s unlikely I’ll do more damage so don’t go crazy but that it ain’t no big thang.

All I know is, I went in there limping and I’m not now.  I even did my “going downstairs test” a couple times (last couple weeks, going down stairs has started with a zingy twinge and required some steadying) and it’s not zingy at all, just a touch of soreness, but no steadying or careful care required.  This is major!

So I’m a convert, I finally get the point of all this hands-on stuff now and my previous closed-mindedness about being pawed, dug into and stretched is now Bring It On!

Er…Racing?
Not this weekend.  It’s irritating to have paid for races I’m unable to do and this’ll be the second one, but the truth of the matter is…who cares?  Yeah, I’m losing some training time and my big race experiment is turning into a normal race schedule (not such a bad thing) but after the way I’ve been feeling this week, I’m good.  No, I’m great.  Everything’s going to be ok.