Sunday, January 17, 2010

Back on the blogging bandwagon

It's been a while since my last post - sorry! There's a lot of catching up to do, so this may be a long one, but I'm back up and running now (no pun intended) and will do a better job in the future.

After the last posted 11 mile run, things went a little haywire with my training. I had my first meeting with my running coach that Monday (thanks again Mom, Dad & Sis!) which was fantastic. He helped identify some weaknesses in my stride that are likely contributing to some of my knee pain, and in addition to planning my weekly running workouts, he also plans out strength training exercises to work on these weaknesses. It's really been one of the best Christmas presents ever.

However, the day after that 11 mile run I started having pain on the inner thigh of my left leg. It felt muscular, but after three days it still did not go away. Normally I wouldn't have been that concerned, except that back in High School while running X-Country I developed a stress fracture in my left femur, and the pain felt very similar to what I recall back then. Stress fracture = no marathon for me. This would have been devastating. Needless to say I wanted to get this checked out as soon as possible. But as timing would have it this was right before New Year's Day and my doctor did not have any appointments for over a week - not very convenient when I had a 12 mile run planned that weekend.

This led to a trip to the urgent care center on New Year's Eve- they did x-rays & found no stress fracture. I was elated! However, the doctor there said she wanted me to go to the emergency room because the location of the pain was consistent with a blood clot in my leg, and she said I needed to have it checked out immediately. So onto the emergency room for me. I learned a few things at the emergency room:

1) I did not have a blood clot in my leg.
2) Even if you are able to walk perfectly fine, they still have to push you around the hospital in a wheel chair but cannot explain exactly why, even when asked.
3) X-rays do not always detect a stress fracture so the trip to the urgent care center was irrelevant. I was back to square one.

The next week I had a series of three doctors appointments, including 1 MRI, and it was finally determined that I had a strained inner adductor. Not a stress fracture. Great news!

Throughout this time my coach was a huge help for me. I couldn't run until I got a diagnosis, and he helped create workouts for me that would set me back as little as possible. It was also great getting advice on how to ease back into running. I'm happy to report that I am now officially back on track, completing a 10 mile run with relative ease just today.

So that's the last few weeks in a nutshell. Talk to you all again soon!


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