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| How I spent my weekend. |
My quest to run a half marathon has hit a major bump in the road this week. After weeks of putting in the miles required by my training program, I have developed a significant injury. I’m not sure of the exact diagnosis but it has something to do with my IT band and basically my entire right leg from the knee to upper thigh is painful pretty much all the time.
This means no running. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Yes it’s killing me not to run. I started to have a few issues the week before last but the nine miles I ran a week ago Saturday were really not bad. My mistake, I’m convince, was buying a foam roller. I swear that foam roller, designed to help stretch my IT band, made everything a thousand times worse. I only used it twice, but that’s when I went from slight soreness during running to not even being able to walk without throbbing pain.
I thought a few days of not running would clear it right up. Not so. Friday I finally broke down and visited my friend, Dr. Scott Balin, who is a chiropractor and running coach. His practice is called The Wellness Centre, and really is lovely and relaxing.
Ok so I’ve known Scott for quite awhile and he often suggests I come see him for various soreness. I haven’t for two reasons. 1. I have a pre-conditioned distrust of chiropractic medicine. 2. I think it’s weird having a close friend of the opposite sex as my doctor.
I’m just being honest. (So now you know, Scott.)
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| The Wellness Centre is gorgeous inside and out. |
A ton of my friends go to Scott and love him. Plus I trust him completely because I know him well through my adoption small group at church. I thought about going to my regular doctor but figured they would just send me to a sports medicine doctor and the physical therapy. I decided Scott knows running injuries so I’d give it a try. I found out chiropractic is covered by my health insurance except for a copay.
Dr. Balin first checked my flexibility and told me my hips were way out of alignment. He explained that it’s probably the curved path we run on giving me IT band problems, and agreed that the foam roller may have hurt rather than helped.
I thought I might have to wear one of those stupid hospital gowns or something, but I decided I could deal with that. Turns out, I didn’t! Scott could feel everything through my yoga pants. I only had to strip for the massage therapist and that’s with the normal warm draping I’ve done before.
First he sent me for some massage therapy. That rocked. The therapist, Carrie, was totally awesome. I’m not one to go get massages regularly, so having one covered by my insurance made the whole appointment worthwhile. Then I went back to Dr. Balin and he gave me an adjustment. We’re talking snap, crackle, pop all over the place. He laughed at how out of whack I was.
So I’m not convinced that realigning me is going to make a big difference, but it can’t hurt anything. They warned me I might be really sore after my first adjustment. I wasn’t at all. But I can’t say I felt tons better either. The guiding principle is that the body has an amazing ability to heal itself and I believe that too.
The best thing they did was recommend contrast therapy at home. Ice, followed by a hot bath, followed by BioFreeze on my leg. That helped a lot.
I’m going back to visit again today…apparently he recommends every other day visits in the beginning to fix things up. Scott is also trained in kinesio taping so he’s going to tape my leg today too. Again, I’m not sold on how that will help but I have friends that swear by it. At this point I’ll try anything to put me back in running mode again.
I was going to run the Katy Turkey Dash 10k this Thursday. I was really looking forward to it. Not gonna happen now. Doesn’t look like my ten mile run on Saturday will happen either.
I hate this. Have I mentioned that?
