The Mysterious Hamstring Discomfort, Part 2
Do you want to hear something pathetic? Yesterday I ran for just six minutes. Six minutes! And they were not consecutive, either; I ran three two-minute reps with two-minute walks in between. My goal was to run for 10 but my leg bothered me so much I decided to stop early.
The Mysterious Hamstring Discomfort strikes again, though now it seems to have evolved into something else entirely. The nagging ache and pain has moved to the outside of my leg and now my hip/pelvis is acting up. Once again I have entered…[cue The Twilight Zone theme]…the realm of running injury misfortune.
Last week I started a stretching regimen to work out the tightness in my hammy. I also started working on my glutes. A cause for hamstring tightness, I have read (albeit online), is weak glutes. As a kid I did toe raises to strengthen my calves whenever I had a free moment (I wanted to dunk when playing basketball) and still do a lot of toe raises. However, I have almost never worked on my thighs or glutes. It is something I will now need to remedy.
Also, I decided it was vital to stretch before running, not just afterward. Five years ago, when I starting getting serious about running, I read that one should stretch after running and never before; muscles should be stretched when they are warm, not cold. It made sense and I always stretched after running. Before running, I always walked for five minutes to warm up, which worked just fine until recently. (I never stepped outside and started running. I made that mistake, too. Painful learning moments are a common occurrence in my running career.)
After stretching and whatnot, I was feeling better and decided to go for a little run last Tuesday. I stretched beforehand and my hammy felt okay on the route. I continued to loosen it with leg swings between three-minute runs. It felt better than it had in a long time. The discomfort was still present but it faded in and out and was not as strong as it had been. I ran again on Thursday and felt a little better. Ha ha! I did it again, I thought. I have mastered another injury!
Not.
Normally I run every other day but decided to give myself an extra day of rest. So yesterday I walked to the track at Bates. Perfectly level, I thought Bates was just what the doctor ordered. I warmed up with a walk, stretched, walked again, and then started running. At first everything was peachy, but then things started going downhill. Even before the first two-minute run was up I could tell something was wrong: the outside of my thigh was beginning to ache. The discomfort steady worsened with the second run, and by the end of the third I had had enough. The only reason I broke a sweat was because of the heat.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Back home I hit Google, searching for my symptoms. (Who needs health insurance when there’s Google?) I came across something called iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS), but it is mostly affiliated with knee pain. (Runners often misdiagnose it as a knee problem. It is, however, associated with the iliotibial band that runs along the outside of the thigh.) Though I have had knee pain in the past (most notably before the Wheel of Crotch Misfortune) I have not felt any knee discomfort recently. Okay — maybe a little, but it was nothing as annoying or bad as my hammy discomfort. However, a cause for ITBS is running on banked surfaces (guilty), running on the same side of the street all the time (guilty), and having legs of uneven lengths (guilty). I run on the same side of banked streets and my right leg is slightly shorter than my left.
I have known about my uneven leg length since I had Achilles Tendonitis in the fall of ’05. (It was my first running injury — and it really sucked.) I visited a podiatrist and he made me a special heel insert for my right shoe, correcting the imbalance. Since my right leg was shorter, it needed to overcompensate and work differently than my left, straining muscles in the process. The insert helped a lot but I never used it while running. I consulted him again regarding the Wheel of Crotch Misfortune two years ago and he made me a special sole for my running shoe. I have never worn it. Frankly, I had no clue if I still had it until I found it today. It cost something like $200. It came in the mail while I was still in California and the bill followed about two weeks later. Miraculously, I kept it and will now start using it. However, I think I will stop running again for a while.
The Mysterious Hamstring Discomfort strikes again, though now it seems to have evolved into something else entirely. The nagging ache and pain has moved to the outside of my leg and now my hip/pelvis is acting up. Once again I have entered…[cue The Twilight Zone theme]…the realm of running injury misfortune.
Last week I started a stretching regimen to work out the tightness in my hammy. I also started working on my glutes. A cause for hamstring tightness, I have read (albeit online), is weak glutes. As a kid I did toe raises to strengthen my calves whenever I had a free moment (I wanted to dunk when playing basketball) and still do a lot of toe raises. However, I have almost never worked on my thighs or glutes. It is something I will now need to remedy.
Also, I decided it was vital to stretch before running, not just afterward. Five years ago, when I starting getting serious about running, I read that one should stretch after running and never before; muscles should be stretched when they are warm, not cold. It made sense and I always stretched after running. Before running, I always walked for five minutes to warm up, which worked just fine until recently. (I never stepped outside and started running. I made that mistake, too. Painful learning moments are a common occurrence in my running career.)
After stretching and whatnot, I was feeling better and decided to go for a little run last Tuesday. I stretched beforehand and my hammy felt okay on the route. I continued to loosen it with leg swings between three-minute runs. It felt better than it had in a long time. The discomfort was still present but it faded in and out and was not as strong as it had been. I ran again on Thursday and felt a little better. Ha ha! I did it again, I thought. I have mastered another injury!
Not.
Normally I run every other day but decided to give myself an extra day of rest. So yesterday I walked to the track at Bates. Perfectly level, I thought Bates was just what the doctor ordered. I warmed up with a walk, stretched, walked again, and then started running. At first everything was peachy, but then things started going downhill. Even before the first two-minute run was up I could tell something was wrong: the outside of my thigh was beginning to ache. The discomfort steady worsened with the second run, and by the end of the third I had had enough. The only reason I broke a sweat was because of the heat.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Back home I hit Google, searching for my symptoms. (Who needs health insurance when there’s Google?) I came across something called iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS), but it is mostly affiliated with knee pain. (Runners often misdiagnose it as a knee problem. It is, however, associated with the iliotibial band that runs along the outside of the thigh.) Though I have had knee pain in the past (most notably before the Wheel of Crotch Misfortune) I have not felt any knee discomfort recently. Okay — maybe a little, but it was nothing as annoying or bad as my hammy discomfort. However, a cause for ITBS is running on banked surfaces (guilty), running on the same side of the street all the time (guilty), and having legs of uneven lengths (guilty). I run on the same side of banked streets and my right leg is slightly shorter than my left.
I have known about my uneven leg length since I had Achilles Tendonitis in the fall of ’05. (It was my first running injury — and it really sucked.) I visited a podiatrist and he made me a special heel insert for my right shoe, correcting the imbalance. Since my right leg was shorter, it needed to overcompensate and work differently than my left, straining muscles in the process. The insert helped a lot but I never used it while running. I consulted him again regarding the Wheel of Crotch Misfortune two years ago and he made me a special sole for my running shoe. I have never worn it. Frankly, I had no clue if I still had it until I found it today. It cost something like $200. It came in the mail while I was still in California and the bill followed about two weeks later. Miraculously, I kept it and will now start using it. However, I think I will stop running again for a while.
