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Injuries

Ongoing ITBS treatment saga

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My physio Sudhir is on holiday this week, on a meditation retreat (!), so he’s having his colleague torture me for the week.

Anna was disappointed to hear of the forgotten orthotic as it limits the exercises I can do, but instead I received a pummelling to my ilio-tibial band, more acupuncture and instruction in stepping up and stepping down (I’m sure regular readers will not be surprised that even the act of climbing up one step I can screw up…).

I was also subjected to “active stretching” for my hamstrings – code for my resisting a reasonably painful stretch – but did feel distinctly more limber after it, if slightly sore.

It’s odd, having gotten so used to the orthotics  correcting my flat-footedness, even a day and a half without them has me feeling slightly weird of leg. Hopefully it’ll arrive in the post tomorrow and the regular routine can resume – now supplemented with elaborate “clam” exercises for my glutes (which I need to be working to exhaustion a couple of times a day, apparently). Ah well.

In related news, the diet continues. I’ve managed to keep to it for 5/6 days now, 1,500 calories or thereabouts a day, only breaking the day of a pair of friends’ engagement drinks (although I broke it in style thanks to the BBQ – doubling my calorie limit for the day). Hopefully the weight loss will resume shortly and I can at least prepare to have less weight to carry around the half-marathon circuit! I’ll blog more about the diet over on Division6, seeing as it involves soup once again and that’s more a topic for that blog…

Injuries

ITBS treatment: phase 2

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I had really hoped that when I saw Sudhir today that I would be given a running and schedule and sent back to resume my training. Such was not to be.

Instead, I underwent:

  • Acupuncture – which apparently works by stimulating blood flow to damaged areas that your body may have ‘forgotten’ is damaged. The 1.5 cm length of needles going into my skin didn’t hurt, surprisingly, but when Sudhir twisted them, making an analogy about slicing through a steak with a knife, the combination of the pain and the disconcerting metaphor shook me somewhat
  • Cupping – which isn’t a thing that dirty tailors do when they’re measuring you up for a suit, but a chinese massage theraphy involving the creation of suction in a cup, and then pulling that over your skin. It looks a bit bizarre but wasn’t too bad an experience.
  • A couple of other types of massage on the IT-band on my right leg.
  • Being taped up with kiniesthiotape (or something: essentially long strips of sports tape) which will stay on for a week in its bright blue splendour. The idea is to provide a passive reminder of which muscles are overtight and which are underused.

Sudhir helps sell me on this stuff by explaining in more scientific detail than I can absorb how each of these therapies is having a bio-mechanical impact on my recovery.

Tonight, I did my own remedial work at home, having received the polystyrene roller from the store I found on Amazon. It involved:

  • Rolling around on the roller, putting my weight on the IT-band. OUCH, goddamn that thing hurts. I mean really, like you wouldn’t believe.
  • Clams – to strengthen my glutes.
  • Leg raises – to loosen my hamstrings and work my quads.

And that was it. Having to do this on a daily basis will be substantially less satisfying than running, but as Sensei Paul said to me tonight, I need to shift my targets and expectations and take it at a sensible pace or I’ll risk further injury.

Next visit to Sudhir is on Tuesday; will see what comes next. First I have a weekend down the South Coast, where it will take all my will to keep the exercises up…