My (cautious) Return

After more than 2 months of excluding myself from the blog world, I hope I can safely say - I'm back!?

Yes.

You see, an injury has plagued me for the past 6 months. It started off as a hip pain/tightness, which grew into a pretty nasty lower back pain sometime around March/April. Right as I was beginning to get good at this whole fitness thing. Since nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I developed a plan of attack - start with the easy stuff. I had always heard about my family and friends seeing chiropractors for their back pain, so naturally it seemed the best place to start. I gave that about a month before moving on to other options - it wasn't really doing anything for me, the chiro didn't seem very knowledgeable, and it was inconvenient for my work schedule and my wallet.

So next I went to my doctor who poked and prodded at me - she didn't seem to find anything abnormal, but got me an X ray anyway. Came back normal. So I went to physical therapy, they thought it was my IT band and gave me a series of stretches for that. They also did an electric therapy treatment on my lower back. After a month none of this really seemed to help. So I went to a different doctor who personally had experience with back pain. We thought it was SI joint dysfunction because I seemed to have all the symptoms. By this point it was July, and the pain had seemingly gotten even worse. It hurt to walk at times. So she put me on a strict regimen of medicine and ice/heat to calm everything down. Then sent me in for an MRI, and thanks to an awesome MRI tech I got it done right away. That came back normal too. What the eff! I mean it's great that the MRI is normal, but I still had no idea what was causing this pain!

By this point I'm pretty frustrated, and I'm then told that I can go to the OMT clinic (kind of like an orthopedist) but the wait for it was 2 months. That's Army doctors for ya. So I wait the gruelingly long 2 months, and during this time I am not doing ANYTHING. I decided to back completely off of exercise. I had no idea what I was dealing with. Some people say exercise is the best thing to help an injury heal, and others say exercise will just cause you further injury. I just had no idea what I needed to do - all I knew was I was in pain, and I didn't want my injury to get worse. Not doing anything seemed to be the smart thing to do.

On September 10th my OMT appointment finally came. I saw TWO doctors, both of them poked and prodded and twisted me up like a pretzel. They tested, stretched, and manipulated the joints. Finally, both of them concluded once again - there was nothing wrong. So that's Dr's #3 and 4 who are of that opinion.

The verdict?
They said that there must be some muscle weaknesses going on in my right side. One of the doctors commented on my ridiculously tight hamstrings. Its true, I am naturally about as flexible as a 2x4. I had noticed great improvements in my flexibility when I was doing yoga, but it must not have been enough. If you have tight hamstrings it can actually pull down on the muscles that surround your lower back, creating the illusion of lower back/SI joint pain.

I was given a set of SI/hip/glute/hamstring exercises to stretch and strengthen those areas. It's been 2 weeks and I'm seeing improvement. There is still some pain at times, but as opposed to the pain knocking out my whole day, now it only hurts for an hour or so and then the pain goes away on its own. I feel much stronger and more stable in my hips. I've run a mile 2 times and started building up my core and muscle strength again.

Now I am feeling cautiously optimistic. So far I have seen nothing but improvement, but I'm still taking things very slowly. These past 6 months have been a struggle. At the peak of my training and racing season I was faced with the possibility that I would not be able to do it anymore. But there is nothing structurally wrong with me and I am infinitely thankful for that. I'm ok with starting over again - I'm glad that I am able to start over again because not everyone is that lucky.

This Saturday is my 27th birthday. I'm looking forward to 27 and being in the BEST shape of my life!