Monday, February 7, 2011

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other!

Ignore the post title for a moment and lets backtrack to Sunday...   and then we'll get to what happened at Physical Therapy this morning.

Sunday....

Sunday I decided it was time to try a run out and see if I want to run the half marathon, full marathon, or not at all on this coming Sunday in Jacksonville with the girl.  If you go backwards in this blog you'll find me pondering about what to do with this race.  Whether to take it easy at Disney and try and PR Jacksonville, or what I was going to do.  Well when Disney got close I decided that there was no way I was gonna PR Jax so I should focus on Disney and figure out Jax later.  Well its now later so time to figure it out!  I took four weeks off from training after the Disney to heal up, and recover, and rest up and fight some early signs of overtraining.  Plus I realized I'd gone straight from the DC marathon into triathlons into the Goofy Challenge with no real rest and recovery break.  Oops.  So I took 4 weeks off.  So it was time to start training again and get moving.  So me being an idiot I decided I'd do an 8 mile run with the girl and see how I felt.  See the thing is that I can pretty much just run whatever whenever.  As long as I'm not focused on a particular pace.  At a slower pace I have pretty steady endurance and run fitness.  So taking a few weeks off after Disney and banging out a marathon at the Girl's pace (9:30s to 10s) is not out of the question for me.  So I wanted to run 8 and see what would happen.  The short answer is that my hamstring was ok, but not super happy about it.  I'm still not sure how I feel about yesterday's run.  Some of my discomfort was just shaking the rust off my legs.  Some of it may be something to be concerned about.  Not sure...   all in all it wasn't a bad run, but the girls slower pace felt somewhat challenging and that was very odd for me.  Not my usual super speedy pace that I tend to run after taking time off.  I finished the run thinking I'd wait till later this week to decide what I'm doing on Sunday.

Monday....

Physical therapy....

This was my first appointment at the physical therapist.  I had no idea what to expect.  In my mind I was going there to learn some hamstring stretches and strength training excercises to equal the strength imbalance in my legs.  I figured that the PT would know what the Doc had asked for and that would be it.  Turns out the PT had other things in mind.  She pretty much gave me a brand new question and answer and then an extensive series of flexibility and other tests.  She said she had a hunch of what was going on.  So after fifteen minutes of stand here, lift that, bend that, twist that kind of stuff and then a bunch of tests done with me laying on a table she annouced her theory.  She says the reason for all my right leg troubles are that I've somehow managed to compress the length of my right leg to be shorter than the left leg by a 1/4" or so.  She then showed me this.  They do this thing where you square your hips and then lay your legs out and sure enough the right one is a tad higher than the left one.  Hmm....   odd.  Apparently this can happen in an instant during excercise or stepping in a pothole or coming down on one foot suddenly or over time.  The plus side is its fixable.  So she did some Mr. Miagi type mojo on it and voila...   its now the same length as the left leg.  Apparently this should in conjunction with some strength training magically fix all my issues in a matter of weeks.  And I can bike and swim as much as I want during this time.  Initially after she did the mojo thing to stretch my leg back out to normal size she almost had me run on it... but instead opted for the elliptical to play it safe.  She asked me if it felt better.  I think it did.  My hammy is still a little tender as it has been for weeks now so it was hard to tell if it was better or not.  I'll admit I'm skeptical that it will be this easy, but at the same time I'm also hopefull it will be this easy.  Time will tell.  So we made a bunch more appointments for PT going forwards and we'll see what happens.

So...   now what?

Well I still can't make up my mind about this weekend.  The girl is amazing and she thinks I'm superhuman and can do anything and if I want to run the full I should.  She will also however be super supportive if I decide not to.  I'm still not sure.  Some may argue I'm nuts to do it.  But it would be great fun to run with the girl and what a great vday present to each other to cross a marathon finish line together.  That would rock!  Plus I'm an idiot.  So theres that too.  As well as that theres loads of non running recovery time afterwards while I focus on strength and flexibility and biking and swimming. 

So my plan is to rest today, (although I may spin a bit and stretch tonight) and then hit the pool and do a three mile run tomorrow and see how I feel.  I'll then spin and run 4 on Wednesday and make my final decision about if I'm racing then.

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