During Saturday's workout I felt a twinge of piriformis pain rearing its ugly head in the form of a slightly numb right leg, knee pain, and major nerve pain in my right butt/back area. By bedtime on Saturday, no position- standing, sitting or lying down was comfortable. Sunday morning I ran for 50 minutes easy and was very uncomfortable the entire run. It felt like I was forcing my right leg to work correctly and my left leg was doing 75% of the running. I made a frantic call to the office of Mike Devitt (a.k.a. the miracle worker) at Forcus Physical Therapy http://www.focus-pt.com/ and snagged the first appointment available (Tuesday @ 9:30).
I literally had a bruise on my lower back on the right side where most of the specific nerve pain was. Maybe I shouldn't have finished the workout and aggravated it more but...it wasn't THAT bad at the time. Thankfully I am fairly skilled at putting my back, pelvis and sacrum back in their rightful positions using what Devitt has taught me but this time nothing was budging. I would get something to move, have some relief and then right back to where it was before. Monday morning I did my long run (100 minutes) and for 60 of those minutes the pain nagged at me, sometimes worse than others.
On Tuesday morning, I waited to run until I had seen Devitt. Sure enough my sacrum was totally rotated forward and just a mess. He worked on it and it easily shifted, the problem is that it shifts far too easily. So I relearned how to self-correct the issue. He also had some interesting breathing techniques to share and have me work on due to residual diaphragm issues from my hernia surgeries. I left the office feeling better and went for one of the most gorgeous runs I have been on all year in the foothills. No one was out, the leaves are all sorts of reds, yellows and deep burnt oranges, it was calm and cheerfully sunny...what could be better? By the time the run was finished I was having the pain again but I was quickly able to calm it down.
On another note, I have been eating like a superstar. With the whitetail deer Pat got a couple of weeks ago-lean meat is in abundance. Delicious. Plus, I have perfected the ultimate post-workout smoothie. Still working on upping my fluids though-for some reason having a tough time getting enough. I am being lazy about it though. Time to shape up.
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