I had an ACTUAL run!

My "return to running" program from my P.T. has been going OK. On Sunday, I actually FINISHED it with my first straight-through run since MARCH. It was 20 glorious minutes of solid running. Here's what last week looked like in my training log:

W and F were both 5x(4 min running, 1 min walking), a short easy swim on Saturday
with some kick drills, and some riding with my boys on Sunday
as we cheered on Mama at the Women's Tri.

P.T. says to keep progressing with my running like I did this fall after I took time off after the Loony Challenge: I'll be running easy runs 3x/week adding 5 minutes to the runs each week. So this week I'll be running 25 minute runs, next week I'll be running 30 minute runs, etc.

I'm not out of the woods by ANY means yet. I stopped going to P.T. 2 weeks ago because she says she can't help me any more. I went to a chiropractor on Monday (and will be going back tomorrow) to check on my sacrum, which appears to be a little locked up. Here's a rundown of what's up with my injuries:


• My Chiro thinks my leg pain is NOT referred pain from my back. He thinks it was/is a separate tendon/ligament issue that didn't show up on my MRI just because it wasn't flared up that day. For certain reasons, I believe him, but I'm not totally sold. He's going to address them both, but as separate issues.

• Leg pain is being kept in check throughout these runs. It's not 100% gone, but P.T. was still OK with me running as long as I wasn't making it worse. At WORST, it's just a bit of a deep ache.

• Lower back / disc / sacrum / whatever-it-is feels the same. It's felt this way for nearly 3 years, and it's really not getting any better (with lots of P.T. and 4 months of non-running) or worse. This is part of the reason why P.T. said she can't do any more for me. She recommended maybe going back to my doc again to see if there's anything else we should do. (Cortizone shot?)

• My shoulder wasn't feeling much better over the last 6 weeks, but then I went for a swim that HELPED! Remember, I went for a swim back in July, and my shoulder had some pain right afterwards. I couldn't massage it out. P.T. said it was an "impingement" (basically "swimmer's shoulder). I've been doing some exercises for it for a few weeks, but it's just ached and ached. Then I went for a short swim just to "test" it on Saturday, and that made it feel 10x better! So maybe just a short swim each week to keep the blood flowing if it helps! I'd LOVE to get back to swimming again!

• With everything else progressing slowly in the right direction, I'm currently most worried about my left foot. I mentioned it as a possible issue in this post 2 weeks ago, and since then it got a bit better, and has since stalled out. It doesn't hurt when running, which is probably a good thing. But I can't walk around barefoot for more than a few minutes before it starts to ache. I'll give it 1 more week of running before talking to P.T. and/or my doc again.

• Acupuncture is helping to keep things loose. I didn't see Robert for a bit in June/July, and that's when things sort of stalled out. I didn't realize it was helping so much until I wasn't getting it. I went back to Element Wellness Group last night:

Nearly 30 needles in me all over my body, with current being sent through
my right side (where things are the most "locked up").


Doing some ear work this time.

Oh, and I should mention 2 concerns that readers recently had. First, someone commented wondering if I needed new shoes. My shoes don't have too many miles on them (I track them RELIGIOUSLY), but I AM thinking about trying something like the Hokas for more cushion. And second, someone commented with concerns that I was running too fast. In my 2 or 3 minute runs, 7-7:30 pace still felt "easy." (That's a minute or so off my half-marathon pace, but for just a few minutes.) Now that I'm up to "straight-through" runs, my pace has dropped because my endurance is squat. On Sunday, my easy pace for 20 minutes was exactly 8:00/mile. Don't worry - I'm not running too hard. In fact, I need a certain pace to keep my cadence up so I don't heel strike and ruin my form.

Alright, back to some easy runs. Here's hoping my foot keeps getting better!