One Injury Leads to Another and to Another , Then Things Get Better

It has been 6 weeks since my last update here, a month and a half of ups, downs, more downs, now possibly thing are looking up. I hope. I think.

Once you have one injury, if you don't address it properly, it's possible it can lead to other injuries. After developing soreness in what I thought way my upper left hamstring (since debunked by my chiropractor - explained later),  I chose to keep running through the pain, which was fairly moderate, but annoying.

So I was running with a bum right knee and a sore what my chiropractor subsequently told me is my piriformis muscle. But one night, while running with my older son's cross country team, less than 10 days after my race, I decided to "open it up" a bit. I started really slow but I started to work into a groove and sped it up with another parent.

After a few miles of showing up the kids, I felt a twinge in my left calf area, kept running, then a more distinct pain that ultimately stopped me in my tracks.

My piriformis issue was still there and I was overcompensating by running on my toes more and developed a third issue.

I took some Advil, iced it quite a bit that night, and went out for a run the next morning, very slowly. And I kept doing my daily runs very slowly for several weeks. It didn't feel good, but I've run through plenty of injuries in the past.

But...that wasn't working for me this time. It got worse and worse, particularly the calf issue. So I forced myself to take off 8 straight days of running.

The 8 days ended on Monday. I ran very hesitantly on Tuesday and felt ok. Today it felt even better. Rest. Try it. It works.

So in the meantime, I still have the soreness in my piriformis muscle, a muscle that starts at the lower spine and connects to the thighbone, behind the glutes. It runs diagonally and the sciatic never muscle runs vertically beneath it.

My Foam Roller

Today I asked my chiropractor if my hamstring stretches are good to do. I generally do the hurdler's type stretch and the standing hamstring stretch where you put your leg on a bench or something and bend toward the food. He said....NO, NO, NO. Those are not good to do and aren't even that effective.

I asked him what I should do then. Other than icing the area, one thing he mentioned was pressing a tennis ball into the area to work it a bit. I have a foam roller contraption too that I will be rolling my rear on more frequently to get the blood circulating in that area.

In the meantime, no races planned. I don't like to commit to a race when I'm running injured.