A body in motion

I know you are all dying to know how my running is going..... or not. That's just it. It's NOT going. I haven't been running in 2 months. You can stop reading here if you want to, or you can read the nitty gritty.

I have always had a lingering IT band monster on my right knee, and every time I have run a 1/2 marathon, at about mile 10, the monster would appear, and I would end up walking/limping/running the last few miles. In Hartford, the monster appeared at mile 6, and it was a miserable end to what started out as a good race. That IT band problem never went away, and 2 months after the race, I could barely run 4 miles without the IT band flaring up.

I found an excellent doctor who is also a marathoner. He told me that he had previously had the exact issue I was facing. He examined me, and determined that my left hip was rotated forward, and that basically my right side had taken over all power, using my left side for only balance. He hooked me up with a trainer that had completely re-vamped his body and running form. He said he wasn't exactly sure what her qualifications were, but that he totally believed in her methods. Plus, he is a really fast runner who had battled through my same issues. He told me to completely stop running until I got things worked out and strengthened. So I stopped running. It actually wasn't too hard to stop running, because it was FREEZING COLD and very windy. I started swimming or water jogging each morning instead of hitting the streets.

I think it comes down to 7 pregnancies with severe sciatica throughout had forced my body to adapt a "neutral" position that was anything but neutral. Also, carrying 7 babies around on my right hip had definitely played a role in messing me up.

I had my first meeting with the trainer the week after Christmas. She looked me over, took some photos, and gave me a basic routine to get my right hip to start to take it easy, and for my left hip to start engaging. She came back a week later and showed me in photos with lines drawn through my body how I am twisting to the right even when standing. I became aware that indeed I was always putting all of my weight on my right leg and none on my left. She also showed my how my shoulders were pulled up, and that we also needed to working on stretching out the muscles on my chest and teaching my shoulder blades to stay pulled down rather than up. She gave me a new workout to start to strengthen some of my muscles that my body had forgotten existed. Over the next 2 weeks, I became distinctly aware of how I was standing, sitting, moving, and how my brain really was not calling my left side into action to help with anything. My brain is starting to understand what normal should feel like and that my left leg is not there just for a decoration.

At my last meeting with the trainer, she gave me a workout I absolutely hate...and love....all at the same time. She told me that my body would begin to look forward to my running days, considering them "easy" compared to the 2x a week workout she had just given me, and which I am supposed to continue doing on my off-running days. It is really hard, and I have to do really funny-looking things, like stork-walks backward and forward, bear crawls, duck walk, a crazy roller-coaster thing, inch-worms, some killer lunges, and the always fun Downward Dog. But I can feel it working, and I'm getting stronger.

Next week I get to start up running again--slowly, but it will be nice to be outside again. I ran 1 mile on the treadmill last week to test out Mark's heart rate monitor for him (a whole other post--hopefully it's his monitor with issues and not his heart), and Mark said he couldn't believe how different my form was while running that it had been previously. I used to dip one of my hips, and I always felt like I was "twisted" when running. Also, I often thought I sounded like a horse when I ran. Now I know why--because my right leg would power me, and then my left leg would just take a quick step to keep my from falling over while the right leg got back into position.

I love the trainer. I asked her how she got into what she does. She said she got her degree in exercise physiology, and worked as a trainer on her university's football team. She was planning to go to physical therapy school, but while doing her hours in PT offices to be able to apply to school, she decided she just wasn't cut out for it. The PT philosophy at the time was about addressing the site of the injury or pain, and not about looking at the overall mechanics of the body to see how they were affecting motion which was then putting strain on a certain area. Anyway, she has changed my life, and I think she is a genius. I now stand on BOTH of my legs, sit un-twisted in the car, and my left hip is rotating back to where it belongs.

I have had 3 different physical therapists in the last 2 years tell me, "Weird. It's like your hip joints are on 2 different bodies. Huh." And leave it at that. Nobody every tried to figure out why. They just told me that I "was probably just one of those people who don't have the right body for running." Yeah. Thanks.

In another week, I will see if my "gait deformity" has corrected itself by growing muscles that I should have had a long time ago.

In the meantime, I sure have seen a lot of interesting things at the pool....but I'll save that for another day.