Seventeen Days and Still Counting

Seventeen days off and still counting. I made another failed attempt to run last night, and while it went better than previous attempts, it was still a no go and honestly not even all that close from what I could tell.

I’m pretty puzzled at this point for a couple of reasons. First, I’m fine now just walking around and even seem ok when I test my leg with short jogs, hops, and various exercises like straight leg lifts (which I couldn’t do at all when I first stopped running), single leg squats, and even lunges. Normally if I can do all that I’m ok to run, so I was pretty confident heading in to last night, only to be brought back to earth within about 90 seconds. Of course I had the same thing earlier this year when I had the problem with my left glute. It was fine until I tried to run, but would completely lock up less than half a mile into an easy jog. That’s basically the same thing I’m experiencing this time only it’s not my glute.

That leads me to the second thing that has me confused. The original injury was definitely my hip flexor. The pain was right in that area, and anytime I did an exercise that isolated that muscle, I either had significant pain or couldn’t do it at all. Now, however, the hip flexor seems fine and the pain feels like it’s more in my hamstring right at the top near the insertion point. I can’t tell if it’s something radiating and maybe the source is still somewhere in my hip or if this is something entirely different, possibly caused by the ART treatment I had or by compensation from when the hip was so bad.

In any event, I’m still on the shelf and have no idea at this point when that will change. I do feel like I’m getting closer, simply because I don’t have pain now unless I’m trying to run, and after last night’s failed attempt I had no achiness or anything like I did after the past couple jaunts. My glute a few months ago progressed similarly, so that gives me at least a little hope, although I was out four full weeks then and I’m only a little two into this break. I head back to the doc today and am hoping for more info then. I’m definitely going to talk to him about my hamstring and the ART as well as a couple of other things I’ve thought of since my last visit and see if we can’t come up with a plan to knock this out once and for all. I’ll report back tomorrow on how it went. Wish me luck, because I obviously need it!