A dog's breakfast
Just back from the physio, so time for a quick update. First, the good news! I ran for five minutes on the treadmill and it all felt fine. No knee pain and no hip pain. The bad news is after analysing my running style he told me I had one of the strangest little running quirks he'd ever seen... I'm certainly original!Apparently, my foot placement is crossing over the mid line. So, basically I'm putting my foot down across my body, then in order to make room for my back leg to come through, I'm pushing my hip out and bowing my upper leg......this obviously puts quite a bit of strain on the hip. I'm amazed that with all the people who have watched me run over the last few years, that none of them has picked it up.On my five minutes he made me focus on foot placement and it definitely stopped the hip movement so that's good. Hard to get it in the right place though and at first I went too far the other way and looked like a duck waddling!The other thing that he picked up is that I am dropping my hip mid stride, not when the foot lands but as I bring the other leg through. Apparently, I was still doing this even with the correct foot placement. Still some work to do there.I've also had an x-ray on my hip to see if I have any actual hip development issues that weren't picked up as a child; possible hip dysplasia. He wants to check that it is not the reason why I developed this strange running gait. He's pretty confident it's not as I could correct it by changing the foot placement, but better to be safe than sorry. More common in dogs I discovered on my internet research! I'm hoping that it's not that, as it would mean I'd only ever be able to do limited running, or run the risk of developing early arthritis, hip replacements etc. I'll get the results later in the week. In the meantime, if I don't get any reaction to running for five minutes he wants me to do a short 5 min blast on the treadmill every day or so and practice the new foot placement.I've got to say that 5 minutes on the treadie felt great, although I felt incredibly unfit! Fingers crossed for good news later in the week!
Five seconds of fame
As I couldn't run on my birthday, I decided I needed some sort of jolt to celebrate my 43 years so we decided to go for a swim at Bronte pool. Sydney is currently enjoying it's coldest winter for years and so needless to say it was a tad on the chilly side.Down at the pool we were accosted by an ABC journalist Phil, from Sydney 702s breakfast radio station. He was looking for a story on people who were swimming in the cold. I was with Mr lulu and another friend and fellow SWEATer Zoe. Zoe is a regular winter swimmer, perfect for Phil's ABC story, plus he had the added bonus of me doing it on my birthday. Consequently, we were broadcast live across Sydney talking about why we were there and then screaming as we entered the water!!It seems we have started something as Phil has now been challenged by Richard Glover, the afternoon show host to a swim off in the morning. Proof of my swim can be found here. Pic on the right hand side of me, Phil and Zoe, taken by Mr lulu. Phil also shared a glass of champagne with us.I'll have to go down tomorrow to cheer him on in his challenge against Richard Glover.After that rather exciting start to the day I did a spot of birthday shopping, about 5 minutes work and then headed off to meet Owly and Don Juan for birthday chocolate, which went into birthday drinks and then Mr lulu whisked me off for birthday dinner with the Evil Twin Sister and Mr ETS, who shares my birthday.As to exercise and an injury update- been spinning, swimming and pilatelating. Hip is feeling really good and the physio thinks another week or so will see a return to light running, if progress continues. The Glute Torturer now says my glutes are better than most people's and we will be actually doing some real training rather than rehab work from now on. No doubt that's going to hurt as well.Mr lulu bought me some lovely silver jewellery for my birthday and I'll get a photo of that and the slightly smaller version of me up in the next few days. I'm stalled at 65.5 kgs at the moment, and so need to do something to beat the plateau. Probably the birthday celebrations haven't helped :)
Give me glutes!
So, where are we up to. Last week was a bit of an up and down week. Early in the week I'd convinced myself I'd never walk without pain again, let alone run, without having surgery and read up on all the horror stories of hip arthroscopies on the internet... always a bad move!But then I went for my first session with my new trainer who we shall call GT or the Glute Torturer. After a quick assessment of my current status he wrote in his book 'worst glutes I've ever seen' and set about fixing them up. I kid you not, an hour of personal training on the glutes... ouchie, ouchie. But, like a miracle cure I walked out of the gym without a twinge in my groin or knee or anywhere (well apart from the glutes!) And it pretty much stayed that way.Friday, I had a follow up appointment at the physio who was pleased with the progress and is more confident that it can be fixed without resorting to surgery. He still believes that it's a tear in the labrum but that it may have been there for some time and could have caused some of my other issues. He now has me taping my knee which seems to help reduce pain and things are looking a bit brighter. I have a lot of work to do to get strong enough to run, but at least there is a plan. I've had another session with the GT today and I can already see a big improvement in my glute strength, so hopefully we can move on to torturing some other muscle groups in due course!In the meantime, I have been swimming, doing pilates and I tried out a Spin class on Sunday, which I think is going to be OK. If I can Spin then I can maintain some fitness at least. In the meantime, I'm enjoying lying in bed in the warm whilst Mr lulu gets up and ventures into the cold and wet!And in exciting news from the bathroom scales I am now hovering around 65-65.5kgs and still going down. I've been working really hard on the diet and despite my drop in exercise, it's not been too hard so far. I suspect that as I get down towards my ideal weight that it will become harder. The next goal is 62 kgs and then I'll see how I feel/look at that stage.Happy running everyone and savour every run; when you can't do it you really miss it... what I'd give for a runners high :)
Not a good start to the week
I've just been to the physio as my leg issues haven't really improved that much. Thinking that it was going to be something relatively simple I was fairly optimistic. Well it's good to be optimistic, but then I was brought down to earth with a crash. He suspects a tear in the labra cartiledge around the hip joint. It's hard to diagnose but that's what we're treating at the moment and we'll see how it responds. Minimum of 6 weeks off running to allow it time to settle plus copious amounts of stretching and some more exercises to do. It's probably caused by my rather stiff hips and I have to do the exercises on both sides. If it doesn't respond to treatment and I want to run then I will have to consider surgery to tidy it up! I've currently got my glute strapped which is a bit like having a non-surgical butt lift and is an interesting sensation!I was impressed with the new physio who was a recommendation from Easy Tiger. He was very thorough and went looking for causes rather than just treating the symptoms. He feels that last year's knee injury was probably also caused by the same hip stiffness. Anyway, let's hope that he can get me back on the road without having to resort to surgery, which I would be very unlikely to have.In the meantime, I'm allowed to swim as much as I like and that was what I as doing at the weekend, plus pilates and weights should be OK. I'm also allowed to try out the bike at the gym and see if that aggravates anything. So, off to the pool for this little duck!
