Tag Archives: injury

06.25.13
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Week of 6/17/13 – 6/23/13

week of 6/17/13 to 6/23/13

This week did not start off well; my notes from Nike+ say, “Easily the worst run ever.” I wasn’t planning to run on Monday, after having done 6 miles on Saturday and 3 miles on Sunday, but the weather was cooling down and I wanted to take advantage of it. I decided that I’d just go do a mile, maybe trying to top my PR time. My body wanted none of that. After my warm up, as soon as I started running, I got a side stitch. I stopped, walked it out, and reset my watch. Then started again. Side stitch again. I decided to ignore it. But I had more pressing problems. My legs did not want to do anything. My “run” was more of a shuffling jog, mixed with walking about every minute. It was bad. Basically, a few weeks ago, I noticed that my groin muscle was a little sore. I figure I’d probably pulled it a little, taped it up, and went on my way. But it really started to bug me on this run. Yay another injury!

Thus is why I went to the free injury screening on Wednesday. After hearing what they had to say, I decided to take a week or so off to see how I felt. Now it has been a week since I last ran, and my thigh/groin/hip area feels much better. I’m walking without limping, yay! However, as you can see by the countdown on the right, I only have a little over a week until I’m supposed to run a 10k. Thus, I’m giving myself till the middle of this week to determine if I will actually attempt it or not. I plan to go out for a short run on Wednesday or Thursday, see how I feel after that. Then I will determine if I need to go to the doctor or if I should continue training. Either way, I will probably take some time off after the 10k to get all healed up and then go to physical therapy and get a gait analysis done to make sure I am doing everything I can to not get injured when I start half marathon training.

So it may be a little quiet in the month of July around here. I’m so ready to get back to running regularly. I still have the appetite of a runner (in other words, I want to eat everything all the time) and fear I’m going to start gaining weight soon, ha.

06.20.13
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Injury update!

Yesterday I went to a free injury screening at Fleet Feet Nashville. They hold 15 minute sessions twice a month to see if your running injuries are serious or not.

I first spoke with Dr. Clarke Holmes from Impact Sports Medicine. I explained my two problem areas to him: my soleus strain (which seems to be doing better) and the pain in my upper thigh/groin area (which seems to be getting worse). He first told me to hop on my left leg (the side with the groin pain). I probably looked at him like he was crazy because it pretty much kills me to do anything with that leg. But I did it, grimacing the whole time. Then he had me lie down and he tried bending my leg in a variety of ways, none of which hurt. Then he poked at my soleus, which almost caused me to scream once.

He concluded that I may have a stress fracture in my hip causing the groin pain. He said that I should have an X-ray and/or MRI done to rule that out because if it was a stress fracture, then continuing to run on it would make it worse and I would need surgery. He said he thought there was about a 60% chance that I didn’t. Not very comforting.

He seemed to agree with my assessment of my calf and didn’t seem overly concerned about it, though he did mention the possibility of a stress fracture there too.

Next I saw the physical therapist, Perry Smith from Pro Motion Physical Therapy. He had me stand straight and poked at my hips a bit. Apparently they are misaligned and this is probably what is causing my injuries. Hearing that my posture was a little messed up was not a super surprise to me, since I’m pretty sure that carrying a heavy backpack on only my left shoulder all those years messed it up. (For example, I’ve never been able to carry a purse on my right shoulder. It just slides off.) I was a little sad that my Wii lies to me though.

wii balance

Today I learned that having a perfect center of balance does not mean that your posture is awesome.

So I guess no more running till I see about my hip. Assuming that I actually don’t have a stress fracture, I will gingerly continue 10k training and then probably take some time off. Of course, if I do have one, time off is the only option.

05.30.13
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Baring my sole-us…

I mentioned earlier this week that I had some pain in my right calf. It mainly felt tight and after a warm up would go away for the most part. Until Monday. I was out doing some intervals, and my calf never fully warmed up. And then it just started hurting so bad while I was running that I had to limp back to my car without completing my run.

So, of course, I googled. What could the issue be? I ruled out Achilles tendinitis. And I didn’t think it was a strain of the the larger calf muscle, the gastrocnemius. It was further down on my leg, a few inches above my ankle. What seemed to fit was the strain of a muscle I had never even heard of before, the soleus.

calf muscles - soleus

Source: iRunnerBlog

Let me take a minute here to say that I am not a doctor. I don’t know for sure if what I have is a soleus strain. It just seems to make sense to me. Take this handy PDF that explains the differences between strains of the two main calf muscles: “Soleus strains…often present as a tightening over days or weeks. They can also feel like soreness that gets worse whilst running and eventually causes the athlete to stop running, either during that run or subsequent runs.” That sounds exactly like my problem.

Basically, whenever my knee is bent and weight is transferred to that leg is when it hurts. I confirmed this by trying some single leg bent knee calf raises. They are no problem on my left leg but on my right leg make me wince. Navigating stairs hurt, especially going down stairs.

The solution is the typical RICE advice: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. I’m taking a week off from running, icing my leg (most) every day, and elevating as much as I can. It’s also completely wrapped up in athletic tape right now. Also, ibuprofen is nice, but I don’t want it to fool me into thinking my leg is better when it actually isn’t, so I take it sparingly. So my next weekly report will be pretty sparse, and I guess I need to include these calf raises in my normal daily stretches from now on.