Addicted to Exercise

I woke up in the middle of the night last night to find my leg tight again, but when I woke up for real it actually felt much better. My plan was to try to warm up a bit and then let Pieter take a look at it. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t feel too bad to jog around a little bit. I was at the AHS track since that was where the group was meeting. Pieter took a look at my leg and did a few movement tests and said he thought my ankle was what was causing the trouble and making the rest of my leg work too hard. He gave it a good pop and told me to run some easy laps around there and let him know if it bothered me any more. Thankfully, it felt pretty good. My leg was just a little bit tight, but nothing like how it had been all week. I ended up running twenty laps, stopping a couple times to report that it was feeling all right. He said I should be clear to run easily the next few days, so that makes me feel good. I really just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to mess things up any worse if I ran. I ended up joining one of my friends for another mile or so of cool-down before heading out for the day. It still feels all right tonight, but I know I have to be careful. I’d like to get some more miles, but I think I will avoid the temptation and just hit the gym tomorrow.

I haven’t given up yet, but I need this thing to be fixed really soon now. Yesterday and today, I’ve done some trampoline bouncing, some elliptical, some weights, some core, and a lot of stretching. I even got massage. All of those things provide temporary relief, but the tightness keeps coming back. I guess the good news is as of this morning I can pop my leg and relieve it instantly. In the past that’s been a good sign that something is on its way out. I jogged a tiny bit this morning (maybe half a mile if I’m generous), back and forth between RunTex and Auditorium Shores a few times. There was supposed to be a guy there who would look at these things for members of our group, but I never could find him.

My leg is still messed up.  It just feels like someone is grabbing and holding my lower leg.  It’s not too bad.  If the race were tomorrow I’d just run.  However, with four weeks to go, I’m not entirely sure what to do.  On the one hand, I don’t want it to get worse, but on the other hand, I want to keep all the fitness I’ve gained.

Today I just did a bunch of leg and core exercises.  I also did a fair amount of stretching throughout the day.  That all helped, but I’m still not 100%.  In theory, if it gets better with just a couple days off I’ll be fine.

Well that was a nice surprise. I woke up this morning, and then I noticed that my leg was not hurting at all. That’s like the first time that’s happened in a couple weeks. I had been planning to do an easy run, but I felt pretty tired so I decided to skip it. Plus, the friend I was going to meet had decided to do the same thing, so when I saw the message it was hard to stay motivated. So, that was a rest day, and I’m probably better off because of it. With any luck I’ll wake up feeling just as good tomorrow.

I had called to get in to see the physical therapist over a week ago, and this morning was the first available time. So, I skipped my morning workout and went there instead.

It was similar to what I learned last time in that I need to seriously work on my eccentric strength. I got some good new exercises to strengthen my calves and some new variations on some old ones. She tested me by having me resist motion with my ankles being pushed in various directions, and I did okay on those. The biggest problem is that with some of the exercises I get a pain that shoots through my leg after I finish the set. I remember having that for a while last summer in the upper part of my right leg. It eventually went away, but it was not fun.

To work the deeper muscle in my lower legs, I have to do standing calf raises, but with my knees kept bent. I have to come down slowly on one leg at a time to make sure my legs stay balanced. It’s really hard for me to keep my knees bent in these. I want to stand up straighter.

I now have the advanced versions of my old balance drills. I have to stand on unstable surfaces to work everything from the hips down but especially my ankles. If I somehow master that I can apparently get someone to throw a medicine ball at me while I do it.

The last part was a bit odd. Normally, when I do weights at the gym I pick a moderate amount of resistance so I can comfortably get through the sets. Now, in order to stimulate my leg bones to get stronger, I am supposed to max out on the leg press, so that would be just a few reps with as much as I can move without pain. She said the estimate should be to take around what I normally do for my sets with both legs, but use only one leg and try for at least 6 reps in all. We’ll see how that goes. I will certainly ease into that. The idea is supposed to be the opposite of how people up in space have their bones weaken from not having to put weight on them.

I will definitely do the elliptical and weight routine again in the morning and then see how I feel after that. My leg is hit-and-miss now. Right this minute it feels good, but earlier today it was still giving my problems.

As promised, I took a total rest day today. My leg is not hurting, but both of my legs feel very, very tired even though I didn’t do anything. So, my plan for tomorrow is to use the elliptical trainer and then do the full weight routine.

As promised, I went and saw Dr. Spears today. The good news is that he’s sure I don’t have a stress fracture. There is a tender spot on my right leg, but he says if I had a stress fracture some of the poking around he was doing would have caused excruciating pain.

Anyway, what he wrote down on the card was “medial tibial stress“, and as you can see, Google knows that’s the technical term for shin splints. Now I know, too.

Anyway, he said I need to practice the eccentric motion on calf raises. This is similar to my hip problem a few months ago, where again I was weak with the eccentric motion. Fortunately, he was confident that I can fix this by doing those exercises correctly and doing more stretching. I am supposed to back off on the intensity of my running until the symptoms go away.

So that’s a relief. I feel much better having had a doctor look at it. I talked to Gilbert, and I am going to try sticking to the trail and the grass for a little bit to try to take some of the pounding from the roads out of the equation.

I went in this morning for another physical therapy session shortly after my running experiment. I am generally improving, and I seemed to have turned the corner on this thing. Today, after getting my back adjusted a bit, I learned some really tough new exercises.

In addition to having really weak hips, I also need to do a lot to strengthen my core. I had been doing lots of ab and lower back exercises, but apparently that means I am missing the deeper muscles. So, I got some new exercises today. This is supposed to help me stabilize myself when I run and reduce the stresses on my joints.

In the session, I get to practice each exercise to make sure I am getting it right, but the real work comes later when I do all the reps and sets. I could tell though, that these were going to be rough.

It doesn’t seem like much. In most of these exercises I am on my back or side moving my hips or legs around, but they really seem to wear me out. By far the toughest one right now is the ball pike, which I feel all over my body after just a few reps. Apparently if I practice these every day I will be much stronger and able to support myself better when I run.

I don’t have another one of these scheduled. We will see how it goes, but the hope is as long as I stick to the strength exercise routine and ease back into the running I should be fine.

I had another physical therapy session this morning, and we started out by testing me out again. My hips are still weak, but tons stronger than two weeks ago when I was in before. That means those exercises are making a difference.

So, I learned some new variations on the exercises I have been doing that will make them even more challenging, and I also got a couple new ones that are even harder. By far the most difficult one is a core strength exercise where I have to balance my back on the stability ball and lift one foot off the ground at a time.

The really good news is I have my metrics for getting back to running. I can keep alternating one minute intervals between running and walking, and I can increase the number as long as it doesn’t hurt. Once I get up to half an hour total I should be good. And of course, I’m still supposed to do as much elliptical training and biking as I can.

This morning I went and tried the physical therapy recommended by the doctor the other day. I had never done this before, so I did not know what to really expect.

We started out by testing all my muscles, and indeed, my hip abductors are really weak on both sides, not just the side that hurts. She had me warm up with five minutes on the elliptical trainer. That was only my second time ever on one of those, so I did get a few tips about what kind of posture to use and such, so that was nice.

I got a few new exercises to do. By far the one that’s the hardest for me is to use either a floor-height weighted pulley or a stretching band tied to a low object and then slowly pull my leg across the floor out to the side and back. I did just two sets of those, and my hips felt just spent. I felt it both on the side that was pulling and on the side that was just stabilizing. The motion looks similar to when I use the multi-hip machine to work my abductors, but for whatever reason this is much, much tougher. It may be in part because my hip is active in stabilizing me on this one, and on the multi-hip machine I can hold on with both arms.

I also got a few really good stretches and balance exercises to practice. For the next two weeks, I’m supposed to do a lot of these strength and balance exercises and only low impact cardio activities. I am supposed to be able to do as much elliptical and cycling as I want. Since I want to maintain or even improve my fitness level, that will probably be a lot.

So, I will go back in two weeks, and then we will discuss my triumphant return to running.