Friday, September 20, 2013

Injury Update

A few readers have asked, offline, what kind of injury I am grappling with and what kind of rehab I am doing so, here's the scoop:

After all the soreness from WS wore off I had a severe stabbing pain that was lingering on my left hamstring.  The pain was high up the back of my leg and often radiated up into my glutes and groin.  It also was kind of a clenching pain that hurt more as I extended my leg or attempted to run fast downhill.  Most of the time the pain was centered at the attachment point of my hamstring and butt muscle.

In late July I finally went the doctor and he took an x-ray which showed, in his words, "A very impressive bone spur" in my left hip.  Turns out the degeneration in my left hip over two decades has caused me to put an extraordinary load on my hamstring/glute and after WS it just said, "Enough!"

So, first thing I did after going to physical therapy was to buy one of those big, heavy thick rubber bands.  The stretch I do daily is intended to pull my hip backward and free up the damaged tissues.  Over time, they should heal.  Also, I have been getting weekly massage treatments on my leg from a licensed orthopedic massage therapist (her name is Kim Coslett and she is amazing).  Those treatments, combined with the rubber band stretches and some snake oil have enabled me to get back to running 30-40 miles a week.

Time will tell when/if I can go longer.

I love getting old!

1 comment:

Freebird said...

Can you please provide details on the the stretch? What does it look like and how do you do it?

Thanks!