Posts Tagged ‘running injury’

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.

Took long enough but I’m thrilled to have finally ended the mystery.  It was the Sartorius, a muscle I didn’t even know I had.

The Sartorius’ claim to fame is that it’s our longest muscle.  It’s a thin strap that starts near the knee on the inside thigh and crosses diagonally to the outer hip.  It didn’t enter my consciousness when I was “shopping” for my injury, I just assumed it was a quad or possibly even nerve-related problem.  But late Friday night, I happened to land on the roller Just So and finally found the Aha! spot.

The discovery explained why the injury seemed to move around.  The muscle itself covers a lot of ground but also, once my outer quad started compensating, it developed a knot of its own, which in turn pulled my tibalis anterior, causing that weird pinching.  That bit came to light while rolling a trigger point on my outer quad with a bent leg, which reproduced the pinch.

We really are like large marionettes: pull this string which pulls this, which pulls this…

Anyway, suddenly, everything was rosy again!  I mean, I’d have to lay off running for a few days, but the relief at understanding the source and being able to treat it specifically made all the difference in my demeanor.  Bottom line, I was now dealing with 2 muscle strains, the Sartorius and outer quad, so it was a no-brainer; no running till Tuesday.

I had a fun weekend playing sickie though. I lounged on the bed with my laptop (thought it best to keep the leg straight), socialized online, fell in shameless love with a chick BBC series (Mistresses…so good!), foam rolled, iced, heating padded, took a short walk every day to test and stretch out the leg and stopped scaring myself by looking up information on stress fractures.  Was a fine way to waste the weekend away.

One thing’s for sure, every injury is an education and I always appreciate that aspect since the more you get acquainted with these things, the quicker you can stop them in their tracks.  This one lingered a while but now that my Sartorius and I have been formally introduced, that ain’t likely to happen again.

Phase II -The Plan
I can’t wait to begin this second training section of Fall 2011!  Coach Adam/A muse gave me my workouts for the next couple months which are very different from the last cycle.  They include “stroke volume” workouts inspired by this interesting article by Joe Rubio, then as the race distances grow, more tempo stuff is brought in. It’s a logical yet powerful trajectory that should leave me in excellent shape for the Vegas Half.

Notorious Sartorius Week In Review
This was the week doubles became my new BFF.  Injury aside, before I tipped the bucket, I was thrilled by how much easier it is to run the same number of miles in two rather than one run.  Granted, feeling “not right” as I did this last week, I should have cut back the mileage, but I do believe that had I done the same distance via singles, I’d have been out for the count sooner.

I’m going to write more about my observations on two-a-days vs singles after I get another week’s worth under my belt.  It’s a whole other reason I’m so excited to get back on the road, to experiment more with this new running toy.

Monday: 12@8:27
Tuesday: AM 7@8:42, PM 6@8:28
Wednesday: AM 10@8:16, PM 6@8:05 (strides)
Thursday: AM 8@8:42, PM 6@8:06
Friday: 1.4@8:47
Saturday:Off
Sunday: Off
Total: 56.4 mi

OK, I just discovered something I don’t like about doubles – it’s now a pain in the ass to write out the Week In Review.  Oh what I do for my sport…

…and all parts working properly.  I even had a slight distance PR this week with 92 miles.

I’ve been strictly capping my weekly volume at 90 so I wouldn’t be tempted to make arbitrary mileage raises, but coming off a couple weeks of enforced cutbacks I didn’t need my usual Monday recovery 9.  Instead, I saved it as a Get Out Of Jail Free card in case I needed a shorter run later in the week, but I ended up not needing it.  (and ok, maybe there was also some petulance involved, a “so there!” to having been injured)

I wore the knee strap one more time, on Monday, but it annoyed me and I couldn’t decide if it helped or hindered so that was the end of that.  I’ve been running without problems since then, though occasionally stopping to stretch if I sense any knee tightness coming on.

Returning to my regular mileage level was uneventful (aside from being hugely happy-making and a big fat relief) but I was wimpy about running fast again, afraid I might aggravate something.  It’s amazing how fragile you can feel after months of feeling nearly indestructible.

Thanks to a week of awful weather, the thought of running hard was extremely unappealing so I had no problem holding off.  But by the end of the week I was antsy about losing any speed I had left, so Thursday I trepidatiously added in some strides.  That went fine, so the next day I did a couple miles at 7:30 to see how that felt and then finished off with a set of strides.  Modest efforts, to be sure, but at least it got the ball rolling again.

Back To My Old Tricks Week In Review
Monday: 11@8:33
Tuesday: 13@8:29
Wednesday: 12@8:18
Thursday: 16@8:21 (6 strides)
Friday: 12@8:11 (couple quicker miles + 5 strides)
Saturday: 16@8:12
Sunday: 12@8:04
Total: 92 mi (avg pace 8:18)

I’ve Been Googlefied!
If you’re a Facebook friend or 3:20 buddy, you already know this, but here’s something crazy I discovered the other day while using Google Street View to check out something on my apartment building.  It’s me!  You can even go down the street for a different perspective of my ass. Hilarious.

The funniest thing besides seeing myself (which was really weird) is that I remember that day perfectly, though it was over 1½ years ago.  I was out there trying to fix the latch on the trunk of my car.  Good thing you can’t see my face because I was completely pissed off.

What an exciting 2 weeks for my leg!  First, an achilles scare due to a tight calf muscle, then the day that left the building, I got runner’s knee. I’m pretty sure it arose from spending a week doing all that intense rehab stuff below the knee (eccentric heel drops, rolling, massage, tennis ball, Stick) while totally ignoring everything north of that.  Hey, I never said I wasn’t lazy.

I’ve spent the week rolling the crap out of my quads, IT and glute, several times a day.  The vastus medialis (teardrop muscle near the inner knee) had a knot on par with that evil calf muscle so I massaged it like mad till it finally abated 4 days later.  Meanwhile, there are still two trigger points on the IT and vastus lateralis that I can feel when I roll, but they’re just about gone.

I was able to run through it except for Wednesday, after trotting downhill towards the park it felt worse than before and made me nervous so I stopped and walked back home.  Later that day, I realized it was just that the discomfort had moved to the IT band side of the knee.  So for the next two days, I cut distance and started taking the flat route to the park.

It’s been feeling progressively better and today, because I wanted to run longer, I got a patellar strap.  I wasn’t sure about it though; when I had ITBS in 2009, I tried an IT band strap and hated it so I wore it once.  But the patellar strap worked beautifully. I felt my knee at the beginning of the run but then…nothing. The other nice thing about the run was my friend Kev was out there on his bike so we chatted for about 5 miles.

Week Of The Knee in review
Monday: 9@8:19
Tuesday: 15@8:08
Wednesday: 1.1@8:36 (my walking home day)
Thursday: 9@8:06
Friday: 9@7:57
Saturday: 12@8:13
Sunday: 15@8:18
Total: 70 mi (avg pace 8:11)

All in all, I was pretty laid back about having another tweak to deal with.  Aside from losing a few little workouts (no biggie since real training doesn’t start till next week), I still managed to have a solid week of running and this week should see me back to the usual shmusual.  Besides, other stuff has been pretty great…

First off, I thought it was going to be a dead month for voiceover work and it ended up being real busy.  But better still was the discovery of my new favorite TV show via Netflix, Obsessed, about people with OCD.  How on earth can I be worried about a little running trouble when there’s a woman so afraid of feces, she scrubs her rectum with a toothbrush to the point of needing 2 blood transfusions.  Seriously, I have nothing to complain about.

Well, aside from this morning when my bedroom window broke so now it’s impossible to open until someone with a very tall ladder comes to fix it. And then a few minutes later (no exaggeration) my router died. But a quick trip to Best Buy righted the latter and in my next post, I’ll tell you why the former was A Sign and how life is going to improve dramatically in a couple months.  Until then, Happy 4th of July to my US friends and Happy Whatever Day It Is In Your Timezone to my foreign ones.

It’s done, I’m fine, yesterday was a perfect run with nary a hint of anything achilles-related (ditto today).  An unpleasant few days though, especially when you read posts like “I wish I’d only broken my leg, at least that way you know it’ll be over eventually”.  But here’s what kept me calm:

1. I’ve never had achilles trouble before so it wasn’t a form or imbalance problem
2. I’ve been wearing the same shoe model for over a year with no problems
3. My mileage has been steady for a few months now
4. I found the muscle knot from hell in my calf

I’m ecstatically grateful for finding that post mentioning a relationship between achilles and calf knots.  Without that, it surely would have gone on much longer than it did.  As it was, it took me 3 solid days to get rid of that knot – a knot that I could not find with my roller!  Unreal.  But my fingers or the Stick would have found it, so that’s my bad, though when nothing’s hurting there’s little reason to go poking around.  Anyway, I’ve vowed to feel myself up on a daily basis from here on in.

Speaking of calves, mine are big, which is probably the reason I don’t feel much on the roller and also pretty much disqualifies me from ever becoming an Elite (oh, the injustice).  But instead of crying into my spilled Wheaties, I’m happy for this silver lining: did you know that large calves are less likely to get stress fractures than slim ones?  Here’s a great little paper on Lower Extremity Stress Fractures for Runners: Risk Factor and Prevention from Steve Magness of Science Of Running that mentions this tidbit (though I’ve read it in other places as well).  Having some extra cushioning is not always a bad thing.  The paper also makes a case for taking shorter strides (aka increasing cadence), among other things.  Give it a look when you have a chance.

In other non-runnerly, yet extremely annoying news, I was flossing my teeth a couple nights ago, like the angelic well-behaved girl I am, and felt something hard. Figuring it was a blueberry remnant, I spit it down the drain.  After brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror and realized that what I’d spit down the drain was a piece of my lower front tooth.  It’s very small so not embarrassing, though it’s weird to see a slightly different me.  And while it’s not worthy of major dental work, I’ll eventually go in and get it filed smoother.  Just one of those gentle reminders of advancing decrepitude.  God, it sucks.

An injured week in review:
Monday: 9@8:28 (7 strides)
Tuesday: 12@8:14 (12 x 60 sec. on/offs +  6m. Achilles jog of shame)
Wednesday: Achilles rest day
Thursday: Achilles rest day
Friday: 9@8:39
Saturday: 13.5@8:10
Sunday: 13.5@8:09
Total: 57 mi (avg pace 8:18)

I don’t usually do .5s but there was a Triathlon going on this weekend – Sprint yesterday, Olympic today – and those thoughtless creatures put their finish line .25 mi in front of my turnaround point.  I wasn’t into making it up somewhere else, that’s enough come-back distance for this week.  Tomorrow, I’m back to the schedule. yay!

It came on Monday, out of the blue, on a 9-mile recovery run: tightness in my achilles area.  Having no experience with achilles problems (except knowing it can be a serious, tenacious injury like PF) I almost bagged my strides but after the first one, it felt fine so I did 6 more.  Mistake #1.  It might have ended on Monday had I not done the strides.

Later, sitting in my computer chair, the stiffness increased as the day wore on. I took ibuprofen and iced often.  I also foam-rolled before bed but didn’t notice anything particularly painful to attack.

The next morning, I could feel it on my run and but it didn’t hurt, it was just “there”.  The run was 12mi with 12x60sec. on/offs.  I hadn’t researched much achilles stuff online yet, just the stretch, so I went ahead with the on/offs thinking “if it hurts, I’ll just run easy” but the fast running actually seemed to squelch it, so I finished the set.  Mistake #2a) it’s classic that it abates during fast stuff and 2b) doing fast stuff is ridiculously stupid if your achilles is acting up.

As soon as the on/offs were done, it began to hurt.  For the remaining uncomfortable 6-mile jog home, I berated myself and worried about what I’d done.  When I got back, my wise forum friends suggested I take the following day off to which I stubbornly replied, “I’ll play it by ear in the morning”.

Meanwhile, I found some achilles cross-friction massage videos that seemed to help, took ibuprofen, iced a lot.  Then I found an old LetsRun post where some guy mentioned that his achilles problems were always accompanied and caused by a knot in his calf.  So I gave my calf a poke in the big fleshy part (the gastrocnemius) and yoweeee…incredible pain.  It was one giant knot that neither running nor rolling had uncovered.

This was an excellent discovery!  It meant it wasn’t purely a tendon issue but a tight muscle creating a tendon issue.  The reason achilles tendons are so hard to treat is due to lack of blood-flow, but you can go to town on a tight calf muscle.  So I pummeled that thing with my fingers, the Stick and a tennis ball and went to bed thinking maybe I could run the next day.

My last day off was May 1st, so I’m annoyed with myself for expecting to soldier on, this is what rest days are for!  But sensibility reigned the next morning when my first few steps out of bed reminded me I had a problem.  I declared it a day off.

Yesterday, I was sure I’d be able to run on it again, since I could prod and pinch the AT and found no tenderness.  The calf was still very painful to the touch, though.  Taking precautions before leaving for my run, I applied a heating pad to the whole lower leg to warm it up.  I also stuck a couple round makeup sponges under the heels of my insoles for make-do heel lifts (thank you Coolrunning for that tip).  But by the time I turned the corner of my block to where it starts going uphill the AT piped up.  So I stopped and walked back to my front door. (Mistake #3, avoid uphills completely…though in retrospect, it was all for the better since I’d probably have continued running if not for that.  Very glad that I took 2 days off.)

Oddly enough, I didn’t get freaked out about it.  I wasn’t happy but was prepared to take a third day off if necessary because the thought of having a chronic achilles problem makes my stomach turn.

So I spent yesterday with more calf attacking, hamstring stretching (might as well work up the chain) and eccentric heel drops and was rewarded by feeling quite good today.  I woke with no sign of it, did the heating pad thing, didn’t bother with the heel-lifts and took the flat route to the park, going 9 miles.  For the first half of the run, I was aware of tightness, though no pain.  I stopped a few times to stretch which helped though it was a bummer, having this remnant.  But it got progressively better on the second half of the run to where I felt like my old self.  Hallelujah!

The test will be how it feels as the day progresses – crossing fingers  and toes that no stiffness returns.  If everything’s A-OK, I’ll keep the mileage down for the rest of the week, no strides or tempo, and then next week start fresh. Just please Leg, let that be the end of it, ok?  Thanks.

And with that, have a great weekend, friends!  Happy, safe and healthy running to you all.