I have hard time with listening to my body sometimes.  I never want to stop and wait for something to heal.  My phylosophy is always to run through the pain, get it treated and move on. 

Lately, I’ve been having terrible hamstring and glute pain.  What is this?  Well they are so tight that my legs actually ache just sitting down.   I have had this treated in the past by my  ART guy Dr. Dylan Drynan over at Activebody. www.activebodychiro.com  I have actually been in a relationship with him longer than any other man!  So I’ve been a couple of times for the hammies and have had a couple of massages in the last few weeks to try and alleviate the problem.  I have been stretching and rolling as much as I can.  It wasn’t until I talked to the massage therapist at the pleasant prairie triathlon this weekend (race report to follow) that I realized what it was.  She asked if I’d been doing speed work.  YES! duh! of course I had just started with the track workouts in the last few weeks.   

If it was just the hammies/glutes I wouldn’t mind but I am still plagued by the plantar fasciitis – it just plain hurts.  Not an 8 more like a 4 but enough to be annoying and enough that my running gate is off.  I have been rolling my foot with a lacrosse ball at work and icing it but to be honest I have not been doing any specific exercises to aleviate the problem. According to Dr. D I have a little nodule in my heal which must be causing the pain. He is working on breaking it up with his Graston tools.  Which for those of you who don’t know is a very unpleasant scraping of my heal using a knife like instrument.  Yes, it is about as painful as it sounds. Here is a link to a  description:

http://www.yogoer.com/classes/o-graston-my-graston/

My running just feels labored and tight.  Not fun, SO to that end I am listnening to my body and it is telling me to give it a break (and to be better about doing some self treatment!).  So here is my plan:

1. skip track this week and swim instead.

2. do more ART/massage

3. per the advice of my massage therapist at FFC, I will be doing some cold/heat treatment… pool / whirlpool and apply wet heat during other times.

4.still run with my group on Saturday (which is generally at a slower pace anyway)

5.self treat as often as possible (which I will track on a calendar)

I will do this for the next week with hopes that things will loosen up. I will see how I feel next Tuesday and make a decision on the track then. 

Tonight I get to help coach some newbie triathletes down at the lake so no computraining.  Can’t wait! 

Have a great day! 🙂