I have been silent for a couple of month now, the reason….I have been injured and yep I did the completely grown up adult thing of sulking and avoiding social media where everyone seemed to be out running. I have a couple of running things I do need to catch up on but first I wanted to record my slow progress back to be able to run again.
Back in September I was rushing around the house getting ready to head to Corby parkrun with Mary, I had my running socks on and whilst dashing down my carpet stairs I slipped, went flying and landed heavily on my lower back. I sat for a few seconds checked that I seemed to be in one piece grabbed my costume and headed of to Corby. The run was going to be steady and although my back did ache a bit the run was fine it was later after I had sat down that I became very stiff. For the next couple of weeks the back was stiff but I was very careful not to over do it at the gym and lifted much lower weights than normal.
It was towards the end of October that I twisted awkwardly and my back became very sore, it became more and more painful and I started to limp due to the pain. I still managed to run at Daventry parkrun early in November as at that time running was the only time my back was pain free. I ran a very slow X country event the next day (will write about it at some point!) but by Monday morning I was in agony and could barely move, I managed to get an urgent appointment with a physio who gave me the news that I was hoping he would not…I had prolapsed a disc…. again!. If you have read my running story you will know about my back surgery a few years ago to fix my prolapse, and I crossed my fingers that it would not result in surgery again. During my previous prolapse I managed the pain well but this time I had to resort to strong painkillers from the doctors.
My leg became more and more painful as due to the limp all my muscles were going into spasm and were becoming more and more tight and it was to painful for anyone to touch my leg. I could not sleep as I was unable to get comfortable in bed so I resorted to sleeping on the sofa with a hot water bottle and could only sit at my desk at work dosed up on pain killers and a with hot water bottle. The pain was continuing to get worse and daily life was becoming more difficult as even walking was becoming impossible so I had to go back to the doctors, this time they gave me very strong painkillers but also muscle relaxants. The muscle relaxants were a god send, although they did not stop the pain they at least allowed me to get some sleep but also allow my leg muscles to relax enough that I could get a very gentle massage.
It was at the massage that we saw just how bad my leg had got and found out why the pain was so much worse this time. One of the muscles that had tighten up the most was my piriformis muscle, this was causing a secondary pinch on my nerve to go with the prolapse pinch, one nerve pinch I can cope with but two sends me over the edge! I at least now knew was I was dealing with, although I could not actually do any proper gym work I went back to the gym and spent hours each week stretching. I saw very slow progress so decided that gentle massage was not cutting it any more so just before Christmas I went for super painful massage instead.
The massage was super painful as my piriformis was still solid so the pretty much the whole session was focused on fixing that, I came out of the massage battered and bruise but with the good news that pain I was getting was no longer sciatic pain but was now just muscle pain. Yes I was still in lots of pain but very happy that we now believed that my prolapsed had healed itself.
I got a little bit over confident and decided I was fixed and I would try a parkun (yes another write up I still need to do!) it turned into a disaster I walked lots of it, was in pain the whole time and set myself back in my rehab. Lesson learnt, don’t run before you can walk! So no running over the festive period for me but instead focus on my rehab. I booked a session with my gym PT and we came up with a program to rehab by leg and in particular my glutes. This at least gave me a focus as only being able to stretch was getting very depressing. Early in January I was still having problems in my lower back so I had to grit my teeth and go back for another super painful massage and this time it was complete agony and I might have shed a tear!
I am now one week post super painful massage and I can finally see an end to the very painful tunnel. I have been able to increase my weights in the gym and I no longer have constant pain BUT I am still not fixed. My recent treatment showed that I now have incredibly tight hip flexors and although this is not causing me pain it is still restricting my movement. I have tried a small run on the treadmill but it was just to uncomfortable for me to complete any distance but I can now just about manage a spin class so I can finally start doing some cardio again. So I will just keep plugging away at my rehab and spend lots of time each week stretching in the hope that I can finally soon start running again as I have missed it so much! Oh and I have about 2 months of social media that I now need to catch up on! 🙂
Run faster see the world sooner 