Arnica

No, not Guernica, Arnica! Haha. That was probably funnier in my head than it is in real life. Oh well.
Anyway, the thing about arnica is it's a "folk remedy" for bruises, sprains and strains. There have been a few clinical trials of it but no strong evidence from them that it works. The trials were "methodologically weak" according to the Cochrane Library folk. So what does that tell you? Not much. Scientist say no.

In the meantime I have had these killer ribs and paracetamol was doing nothing for me and I can't take ibuprofen because I'm still taking aspirin since my heart thingy, because if I take ibuprofen I can have a "major haemorrhage" bleeding from my gut. Peter says I'm a pussy for worrying about things like this.

It got me thinking about what else I can do, apart from sit around being sore and making groaning noises every time I move. So I decided to throw some non-science at the problem and got myself some arnica homeopathic tablets AND some arnica cream, and started using both of them on Sunday. By the end of the day I suddenly had DOMs without any reason for them. I'd run 15 miles the day before, but on a pretty flat course, and I've run an equivalent lengthed run for the last 3 weekends so there was nothing special about that run. But I had these DOMs anyway, which lasted into the next day. And my ribs got a lot better. They're still pretty nippy at times but much less raw and sore than they were.

So it might be just timing, and they were due to get better. Or it might be that there was 100mg of placebo in my arnica, who knows.

Had a nice run this morning and I was happy to even see a few sub 9 minute miles in there!

Oddly, I heard yesterday that two other members of PRC are out with bashed ribs at the moment. Ian MacMillan came off his bike while drunk and Gillian MacKelvie had such a bad chest infection she broke her ribs coughing. Must be something ribby in the air....Better go. Showers to have, universidad to go to.