Hello, world!
My last post was largely griping about being injured again. That was just about a month ago. I'm still injured.
I was doing great- lots of running, climbing, looking to up my biking, when one day, after a nice workout at the climbing gym, I was still feeling sprightly and had a go at a rowing machine. The result was sore muscles, then a sore back, and what eventually turned out to be SI joint fuckery. You know the old "lift with you legs, not with your back"? Yeah, this is what happens. The SI joint has very little motion, but it's basically what keeps your spine vertical and anchored. Muck that up, and things get unhappy very fast. I kept reinjuring it, over and over, until last week when my doc (a sports medicine chiropractor) sat me down and said "dude" (literally, she said "dude"!) "this isn't working. Right now, we're wasting time, and I'm not about wasting time." Essentially, it keeps slipping back out because I need to build my lower back core strength up to the point where the muscles can hold that in place through the beatings I throw at it.
At least, that's the current theory. So I've been off the bike, wall and road for a while now, and for the time being will stop trying to ease back into that in favor of some very silly strengthening exercises, with the hope that I can bounce back from this.
The other piece to this puzzle that I really need to meet head on is my feet. After fucking up my achilles in December of 2005, I spent about two and a half or three years in boots. It helped it hurt less, but actually may have made the injury worse. It certainly destroyed my arches. The plan is to rebuild those, with fancy arch supports that are supposed to stimulate muscle growth in the feet, with the long-term plan to transition my running to trail running in some some sort of minimalist shoe, either my VFF, or something similar. This should help me straighten out my feet, which in turn will help my knees be less sore before that develops into an actual injury, and help my lower back as my hips straighten out and put less torsional strain on... you guessed it, the SI joint. The typical reaction to overpronation tends to be to add more arch support, but given how strong my arches used to be, I suspect I'm one of those people who can rebuild them. This is doubly important because at 230 lbs or thereabouts, I've got enough body mass to crush through just about any running shoe. Better to build my feet up to where they can fend for themselves than just keep shoring them up and letting them get weaker.
And it's me, so of course I've been doing crazy amounts of internet research and reading on this. Specifically, I've been reading Born To Run, and using that as a platform for more research. It's an interesting book, to be sure. OK, scratch that- I think this might be what a religious conversion feels like. I need to go out and test the theories of course- but the whole approach seems brilliant to me. Go minimalist on the shoes, so the feet can function normally, don't run set distances or times or speeds, but just run as fast and as far as you enjoy. What a concept, right? We'll see if it bares up.
I'm also dying to explore more of the trails on Bay Area Hiker. I had no idea we had that many trails in the area!
But beyond the never-ending gripes of wah, I'm hurt and I don't like being hurt that everyone's heartily sick of, life is going pretty well. Still enjoying work, and enjoying the people I work with, reading lots, writing less but still, steadily getting rid of crap I don't need and replacing crap I do need with better-quality crap. Going to Tahoe Faire next weekend- really looking forward to that!
I was doing great- lots of running, climbing, looking to up my biking, when one day, after a nice workout at the climbing gym, I was still feeling sprightly and had a go at a rowing machine. The result was sore muscles, then a sore back, and what eventually turned out to be SI joint fuckery. You know the old "lift with you legs, not with your back"? Yeah, this is what happens. The SI joint has very little motion, but it's basically what keeps your spine vertical and anchored. Muck that up, and things get unhappy very fast. I kept reinjuring it, over and over, until last week when my doc (a sports medicine chiropractor) sat me down and said "dude" (literally, she said "dude"!) "this isn't working. Right now, we're wasting time, and I'm not about wasting time." Essentially, it keeps slipping back out because I need to build my lower back core strength up to the point where the muscles can hold that in place through the beatings I throw at it.
At least, that's the current theory. So I've been off the bike, wall and road for a while now, and for the time being will stop trying to ease back into that in favor of some very silly strengthening exercises, with the hope that I can bounce back from this.
The other piece to this puzzle that I really need to meet head on is my feet. After fucking up my achilles in December of 2005, I spent about two and a half or three years in boots. It helped it hurt less, but actually may have made the injury worse. It certainly destroyed my arches. The plan is to rebuild those, with fancy arch supports that are supposed to stimulate muscle growth in the feet, with the long-term plan to transition my running to trail running in some some sort of minimalist shoe, either my VFF, or something similar. This should help me straighten out my feet, which in turn will help my knees be less sore before that develops into an actual injury, and help my lower back as my hips straighten out and put less torsional strain on... you guessed it, the SI joint. The typical reaction to overpronation tends to be to add more arch support, but given how strong my arches used to be, I suspect I'm one of those people who can rebuild them. This is doubly important because at 230 lbs or thereabouts, I've got enough body mass to crush through just about any running shoe. Better to build my feet up to where they can fend for themselves than just keep shoring them up and letting them get weaker.
And it's me, so of course I've been doing crazy amounts of internet research and reading on this. Specifically, I've been reading Born To Run, and using that as a platform for more research. It's an interesting book, to be sure. OK, scratch that- I think this might be what a religious conversion feels like. I need to go out and test the theories of course- but the whole approach seems brilliant to me. Go minimalist on the shoes, so the feet can function normally, don't run set distances or times or speeds, but just run as fast and as far as you enjoy. What a concept, right? We'll see if it bares up.
I'm also dying to explore more of the trails on Bay Area Hiker. I had no idea we had that many trails in the area!
But beyond the never-ending gripes of wah, I'm hurt and I don't like being hurt that everyone's heartily sick of, life is going pretty well. Still enjoying work, and enjoying the people I work with, reading lots, writing less but still, steadily getting rid of crap I don't need and replacing crap I do need with better-quality crap. Going to Tahoe Faire next weekend- really looking forward to that!