I so wish I could do a brain dump right now. Too much crap on my mind and I can't seem to organize a single coherent train of thought. I told someone at work this week how running was the one chance where I could "think about nothing" and he didn't think it was possible. Now all I can think about is how nice that time can be... It's a big part of why I've become addicted to it.
So intead of fight it, I suppose I'll just post about running. Around mid June, shortly after I did my first half marathon race of the summer, I started getting some pain in my left hip. It was a deep pain that would feel worse after running, but better while running. Afterwards, sometimes even walking would cause sharp shooting pains to run from my hip area down my leg to my knee.
I was a tad worried to say the least. I goggled various possible issues and came up with a few possibilities, the worst of which would have been a problem with my sciatic nerve. (symptoms sounded very similar) Eventually I just went with a solid 3 days of resting with light runs and it sort of went away but was always nagging me and got significantly worse with fast pace runs.
Fast forward to last week and my 16 mile run. I took the opportunity on that run to pay close attention to my body. I had already made a deal with myself that if my hip started to act up I would call off the run, because the last thing I wanted was to do serious damage. But I ran that 16 miles and not only did it end up feeling great but it was at a very good pace and with very little after pain.
What changed? Well, what I came to realize was my stride was uneven. I found that I was pushing off with my left foot for the majority of my forward motion. The end result was that over time, I've been putting a lot more wear on that area. It also was the cause of more blisters on my left foot. I couldn't figure it out why my right foot never had blisters!
With a conscious effort, I tried to even out my stride and push off with both feet equally. The result was no more pain, the blisters on my feet are going down, and I'm feeling much better. Last week I decided to experiement and see if it made that much of a difference. I ended up running 5 days in a row, all decent distances and paces. By the end of the week, I had no significant pains. Problem solved!
Here are the splits for my 16 miler:
2:14:16 Total
1- 8:34
2- 8:45
3- 8:36
4- 8:40
5- 8:27
6- 8:15
7- 8:17
8- 8:19
9- 8:13
10- 8:05
11- 8:13
12- 8:09
13- 8:09
14- 8:24
15- 8:41
16- 8:17
3 comments:
Uh-oh I really thought you were going to say your pain was back. So glad that's not the case! Love you-
Shawn, dear. I'm SOO glad you used your ninja medical training to cure yourself, but next time GO TO A DOCTOR!!!!!!! Especially if you get numbness because you can do permanent, serious damage without even knowing.
And this concludes my "mom" moment for today.
We'll there was never any numbness, it "felt" like a pure overuse type injury. And because of the way it would come and go, I knew it couldn't be THAT serious.
My mom's boyfriend gave me the following advice: If it hurts MORE while you run, its an injury. If it hurts LESS while you run, it's not.
I trusted his advice mainly because he's run the TC marathon 19 some odd times. :-) And going to a doctor can be hit and miss, because 9 times out of 10, they will just tell you to rest.
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