Bad-Ass, and Not in the Good Way

Interesting feedback from my last post about my posterior pain from Piriformis Syndrome.  Apparently I’m one of the few runners who haven’t either dealt with this in the past, or aren’t currently dealing with some form of this issue.  It’s the Voldemort of the running world.  The injury-that-shall-not-be-named.  I’m now part of the secret society.  I even learned the secret ass-shake.

Had my first PT session yesterday to try to get the buns working again.  The therapist said it doesn’t present itself as decidedly as some cases of Piriformis he’s seen, but I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.  God forbid I ever came up with an easy to diagnose and easy to correct ailment.  Hip strength on my right side was decidedly less than my left side, which is not surprising based on my issues.  Did a little electrical stim, and went through a series of stretches I’ll be doing 2x daily for a week, at which time I’ll do another PT session and hopefully add some strengthening to the stretching.  I got his blessing to do some low-impact work at the gym (bike, elliptical, etc.) as long as it’s not hurting, so I’m going to drag my sedentary self to the gym this weekend and test out the leg.  Hopefully the gym is still there. It’s been a long time.

Assuming I get my assorted ailments sorted out, I’m debating what to do over the next few months when I’m not marathon training.  I’ll pick back up with heavier weightlifting, which I tend to greatly reduce during a training cycle, especially in the last 2 months of the cycle.  Having lifted pretty regularly for about 25 years, with some periods of pseudo-bodybuilding, I can put on muscle pretty quickly, which adds to the general unhappiness of my legs when I’m training and they have to haul around the extra weight.  At the very least I’ll focus on more core and lower-body weight training, to try and get some balance back between the major leg muscles.  Glutes and quads are way behind the hamstrings these days is terms of strength.  I’m giving P90X some pretty serious thought, but I’ve heard from several people how brutal it is, so I’ll need to get my legs fairly healed before I dive into that.  Maybe I’ll just find a monastery in the side of a hill and train to be a superhero.  Maybe just become a Ninja.  So many possibilities.

Run swiftly my friends.