On a whim I had a look at my last blog today and saw that it was in December. I have a few things to tell you about my "injury journey".
"Are you running like a gazelle now?" I hear you say.
Well not exactly.
Not exactly running at all in fact.
I gave it up a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't missed it.
Anyway, this is what has happened. I went to see Dr Pain Steven McQuinn again somewhere about January, and I told him I wasn't really getting anywhere with my running and I was thinking I might just shelve it for a while because it wasn't even enjoyable any more. I told him I was thinking about going to see a personal trainer or someone to help me get stronger, because I'd tried this on my own before but I knew that I was likely doing everything wrong and creating more problems for myself in the future.
He said he went to a gym nearby and it had a few personal trainers there who he thought were excellent, so I looked it up and I made an appointment with Ross, who I have now been training with since maybe January or February. He listened to my story and got me to do some things and prodded the old legs and declared them stiff, tight and weak (but maybe more tactfully than that) and we agreed that I'd strip the running right back, or maybe even just do easy cycling while I tried to get stronger and more flexible.
I tried to do that, running on awkward sore legs sometimes and retreating onto my indoor bike other times. Every time I rode the bike I hurt my left knee. Every time I ran I hurt something behind my right knee. In the meantime I did do the exercises he was getting me to do and I began to stretch every day. I hated the stretches at first and I still don't love them but sometimes now they make me feel better whereas at first it just felt kind of fruitless and unyielding.
We've been focusing on trying to reach the mythical region - the posterior chain - a land where people use their bum to do things. I did have a go at that back in 2023 when I'd goosed my knee. I went and saw a physio at the Edinburgh uni gym who gave me a host of exercises with exactly that in mind. I did do them and I continue to do them but apparently that never got them glutes firing.
Steven McQuinn was on the same thing - "You should be using your powerful core muscles" (He meant my booty :-) )
Me- "yes, but where are they, and how do you use them?"
Looking back on it I realise my left knee has been pretty good for a while now, so that's progress. For that I had to do squats with a band round my thighs and push my thighs out the way - I mean outwards - not just get them out the way! For a while I thought I would only run, because moving between the bike and running was more confusing than just doing one thing or the other. I was just doing 3 or 4 miles though, at snail's pace, and every time I ran the back of the top of my right calf and the lower part of the hamstring would be irritated for a day or two. I was away on a course in Bristol in March. I took my resistance bands and did my exercises in my room at night. I went a couple of runs in the morning too and then limped for the rest of the day. It was embarrassing. Last time I was down there I was recovering from a presumed stress fracture in my foot, but I was running better than I was this time.
We met every day in a big room. It was a bizarre set up. The lead trainer was an Israeli woman and she had been meant to have flown over for it, but the thing in Iran kicked off 2 days before the course started, and she couldn't get out of Israel - so - through the miracle of the internet she was beamed into the room on a big screen, as a fellow course participant remarked, like the Big Friendly Giant. I don't exactly get the reference but I liked the phrase.
For the first couple of days she had to leave abruptly on several occasions to go down to the bunker as there were air strikes on wherever she was in Israel. It made it all remarkably real.
It was a therapy course so as you can imagine everyone in the room had to introduce themselves and say a bit about themselves. A woman sitting behind me announced she was from Singapore and she was pleased to be here and then started to sneeze. She showered me in sneezes for a day or two, and when I got back from my course, I began to shower Peter with Singaporian sneeze water. You are it, pass it on.
I forgot to mention, all this time that I'd been barely running and injured and what-not, Peter had a big bout of sciatica. It started a few days after the 7 hills and 7 Beers shenanigans, which he ran with Nick. I was quite honestly surprised he survived. He came in after it and announced that he was alright, he was fine, then he went through to his computer and I found him there a few minutes later with his head in his hands. He hadn't drunk anything except beer or eaten anything and I think I maybe got him to drink a cup of tea. He wanted to tell me all about it but in that slow, ponderous way that the very drunk do, you know, that way that makes you want to kill them?
He went off to bed and even though I wanted to kill him I was also a bit worried that he might just die, so I went and listened for his breathing a few times. He was breathing fine and emerged a lot clearer and now hungry a few hours later.
That was a hillier run than he'd done in quite some time and on the Monday he went out and did a coastal run too - and then somewhere about Wednesday his back started to hurt him and then in the next day or two he entered a world of relentless sciatica pain - which is just clearing up properly now. For the first while he really needed looking after because he couldn't stand up for long, couldn't sit for long, couldn't lie for long. It was a misery for him.
I got to try out all my gadgets on him which I've accrued since I started to take my career as an injured athlete really serious c.2021 or so. I've got infrared wraps, I've got a TENs machine. Neither of those things had much impact. I've got an infrared sauna blanket. That didn't help much. I had quite recently got a massage gun. I didn't think all that much of it, but that punchy little baby pretty much saved the day for our Peter. He'd wake up in the night with horrible crampy pain and then pummel it away with the massage gun.
So how did I get onto Peter's injury? Oh yeah, I felt guilty leaving him for a week to go to Bristol, but he had started to be a bit more ambulatory and was getting out for walks, so he had his birdy pals to talk to - men who lean on walls and look at birds, and there were some frozen dinners in the freezer.
But when I came back I gave him my cold. We both had it.
Then after a week of having a cold and not even bothering to run because it was rubbish anyway, I went for a run and 2.6 miles into it I got a sharp pain up the side of my right calf and had to pull up swiftly.
I was hurpling for a few days and it began to ease up but that did it for me as far as running went. I figured I would just forget about it until I was truly feeling better or never, whichever came first, and then start from scratch. I started cycling on the indoor bike again and something had changed with my left knee because it didn't hurt it any more. I still had to be careful of my right calf on the bike and couldn't go full gas at all - but it felt like modest progress.
So I went along to see Ross last week and all I'd done was strength training and bike training and my legs were relatively fresh and I had a bit of a dream session - until I didn't. Everything he asked me to do I could do and from his face, I was doing it more easily than he'd anticipated. I was impressing myself. I was doing lunge walks with weights and high side planks and I can't even remember. But then he got me to jump onto one of these bouncy BOSU half balls and off again. I really didn't want to jump because of the loss of control, but after a few goes it was actually fine. But then he wanted me to jump on and then jump off backwards onto one leg at a time and land it. I wasn't super-keen, but I hoped I would just get away with it. It didn't feel great and then - bang - something was really sore down the inside of my right knee. I had that sickening feeling. I could still move it, but, you know, you can still move an injury for the first wee while before it seizes up. Phil Davies finished the Ian Hodgson Mountain relay on a complex fracture after he'd put his foot down a hole. The adrenaline gets you through.
So I walked the mile home on an increasingly sore leg, made it up the stairs, dreading the moment of when Peter would shout "how did it go?" and I've have to tell him I'd fucking fucked my stupid leg. That's code for I am beside myself with an intolerable mixture of regret, anger and despondency.
So that was Wednesday and it's Saturday now. I haven't been outside since. The first day it was just sore all the time. The next day I could get comfortable but it was super sore to walk on. I had to sort of warm up before I could put my weight through that leg and then not stay on it for long. Yesterday was a little bit better. Today was better again. I had a shot on my indoor bike. Garmin was suggesting I do a super-easy session and normally I don't bother doing those because it seems pointless. But today it seemed like just the thing. I listened to a talking book.
I've found two books to cheer me up over the last few days when I've not really been able to do anything at all. One was "In my time of dying" by Sebastian Junger. He wrote 'The Perfect Storm' which I don't remember all that well but I remember that it was well written and gripping. This one is about himself where at age 58 and ostensibly fit and well, he has a near fatal bleed from an aneurysm and is lucky to survive. The book covers the incident, the medical side of it, his brush with death during which time his dad appears and tells him to just relax and go with him. Sebastian's reaction to that is "No way!" He tells the story of his dad and his dad's death and the aftermath of his own brush with death and his questioning of what it's all about; his need to make sense of it. That was what I was listening to on the bike today. It's a good read (or listen) - he's a good researcher so he tells you lots of interesting things along the way.
The other book is a book by a woman who was a yoga teacher with her own school who went out skiing at the age of 48 and had a horrendous accident in which she broke her neck. She is immediately paralysed and has to find a way to adjust to that. One thing is that she is more in tune with her body than most of us are because of the yoga. She finds ways round things - for instance the medical staff don't want her to come off her breathing apparatus because she can't use her diaphragm but she is convinced that she can breathe and in fact does manage to, and she also recovers some use in her arms and also her bladder control. She's a little spooky and senses energies, but also very practical and works now in...I think Vancouver...but with people with new spinal injuries and within the health system. She says herself she isn't a writer but she has a lot to say - so her book isn't the best written ever, but it's really interesting. And it's helped me get my injury into perspective - because - at least I can move my arms!
It's called 'Where Science meets Spirit' by Mary-Jo Fetterly.
So, to sum up; this runner is not running at the moment. Maybe later. But I did 10 press ups the other day. I know that's not very many but I haven't been able to do any since I got a frozen shoulder in 2021, so it pleased me.
The other thing is I got another new gadget which is compression massage leg things. Called Fit Kings. I really like them. First of all I got some...I think it was Urevo ones which also had heat and I really liked them but they were faulty and so I had to send them back. The Fit Kings seem more sturdy and likely to last and they will do fine.
