Training for St. George… kinda

Today is the official start of my training for St. George and my workout was to walk/run 5 miles…

You may be wondering what happened since the last time you heard from me. I was on track to start training for a BQ attempt (I still am, just much more hesitantly). Well it’s a bit of a long story and it starts over a year ago while training for Colfax.

Those of you who have followed me for some time may remember that when in peak training for Colfax, I started getting a tingly feeling down my right leg. I could feel the sensation all the way from my glute to my pinky toe. I went to the doctor, and they said it was likely a herniated disc and that I needed to rest. Well after Colfax I did just that. I rested a lot. I fact, I never really got my mileage back up.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago… I was just starting to hit 35 mile weeks when the feeling came back on my left side, but with a lot more intensity. It was so bad that I couldn’t sleep and was having trouble pushing the clutch down in my car. It was completely miserable and was kinda scaring me a bit. I mentioned this to one of the Physical Therapists at my job and he offered to treat me (for free!!!). To be honest, I felt like I had no other choice. The pain was rather excruciating.

After pushing and yanking on me for a while, he concluded that this was not a herniated disc, but piraformis syndrome. This is a notoriously difficult injury to treat, and given how long I’ve been experiencing it (over a year), it’s going to be a long road for me. He suggested that I take a few weeks off (I had already) and work on core strength and do some dry needling. Well… over the past week I’ve started to walk/run. I walk for 0.2 miles and then run 0.8. This morning was the first time I ran without any pain at all since Colfax. I felt weak, out of shape, and overall, pretty terrible… but I was not in pain.

It’s only been a few weeks and I know that it’s not fixed. Driving still gives me a substantial amount of pain, but I am getting better. The PT didn’t think there would be any reason for me not to do St. George and he even said that my crazy ideas of running a 100K next year are not all that crazy, at least not for my injury (he thought they were crazy ideas in general, but that my body should be able to handle it).

So… that’s my update. I’m getting better, slowly. I’m running, slowly. This is a long and difficult process, but I am going to come out on the other side.

Also, given the amount of core work I do every day for this injury, I’ll likely have a sweet looking 6-pack.

And in case you were wondering, Elly has settled in quite nicely to the Utah life.