Another Running Year Closes In

I have spend the better part of the year trying to heal from the full marathon, and somehow rid myself of the lingering injuries I acquired from it. As hard as I worked at strengthening my core and lower back, the knee pain continued to return on runs longer than about 6 miles. And somewhere after the full I badly injured my hamstring. I was barely healed from the full marathon before I had to run the La Jolla Half, "uninjured" but totally untrained. And of course without having addressed the sources of those injuries, they came right back in full force just miles into the run, taking me weeks again to heal. I spent the rest of this abnormally warm summer running short distances, but feeling like I was doomed, and fearing that my long distance running career was short lived and over.

With the AFC Half being the last race in the Triple Crown Series in August, and already knowing it was going to be miserably hot, I didn't want to run in pain too, so my last ditch effort was to go to Sharp's Running Clinic to see if they could ascertain what was causing the knee pain, while trying to rest my hamstring. I had found about it from an article in Runner's World magazine, and had enough time to get in and be seen and be able to apply any recommendations before the race.

What happened next was amazing! Stewart was the PT that I saw, and he assessed my flexibility, muscle strength and then had me run on a treadmill and took tape from both the back and side, and had me come back the next month to go over the results. What he found was that my quads were overly tight; likely the cause of my strained hamstring, and I had a tight right hip flexor which was causing my left leg to track over too far and land in front of me instead of straight down, which then in turn de-stabilized my core and put a lot of strain and weight on the outside of my knee. Armed with new personalized knowledge of my own bio-mechanics and exactly what was going wrong, I did the exercises and stretches he had given me, while applying this new knowledge to my running and workout routines. Two weeks later, I ran a 10 mile long run - no pain. Two more weeks later, another 10 miler - no pain. And finally, in August, I ran the AFC with a terrible time of 2:12 but most importantly, pain free! It wasn't anywhere close to a PR but it was a major win in my book!

Now, I look forward to running the Holiday Half (my all time favorite race) and I have my sights set on a PR (1:50 or less). I have a new lease on life, or at least running!

I also purchased the Withings scale and body fat analyzer which will allow me to monitor my body fat on a regular basis, which is really necessary for someone like me who has so much muscle mass and day to day weight variance and fluctuation that just weight itself barely paints a silhouette no less an accurate picture of health. I'm happy to report that I'm at a solid 24% body fat, which is the same as it was a few years ago when I got myself officially tested (dunked), and a completely normal and very healthy level.

Now if only this damn heat would calm the eff down so I could run my little heart out during my lunch breaks, instead of sweating my nuts off for walking.....