It was an early preview of winter this week! Totally caught me off guard because I still have a lot of outdoor stuff to put away. That will be next week’s chores 🙂 I got a decent amount of miles in, and came up with a plan. I do love me a good plan!
- Miles run = 29.5
Monday – 6.5 miles. Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all who serve! I had the day off work, so I went back to bed as soon as my kids went to school 🙂 Then I went for a run in the really cold weather! As I was finishing up, the sky started pelting me with little ice bombs. Yep, the snow was on its way!
By the evening we had a few inches on the ground. I’m glad I got out earlier!
In the past few weeks I’ve been battling proximal hamstring tendinosis again. The pain is where the “butt crease” or “pantyline” is. It seemed to be feeling more manageable while I had a heavy load on it with marathon training, but after my races it’s just been getting worse. I’ve been on a mission to find the silver bullet to get it fixed! I ran across an ebook from a trainer whose exercises I have been doing for a long time now. She had an updated video, and offered the ebook “to end all pain!”. I was totally sold. My husband questioned me spending $30 on it (like I’m buying magic beans…), but that’s a small price to pay to get this annoyance fixed!! [you can find the ebook here]
The most frustrating things about HHT are 1) it takes a long time to “fix” 2) stretching doesn’t help, even though things feel tight 3) resting doesn’t help it either. Strengthening is the solution, so that’s what I’m focusing on. On a random note, Lauren Fleshman is having this issue too, so it’s been interesting to hear her talk about it on her Work, Play, Love podcast.
Tuesday – 3 miles, treadmill. I woke up feeling pretty stiff/sore and it took me about a mile to warm up and work the kinks out. After that I started my first day of the High Hamstring Tendonitis Recovery Plan (“HHT”). The daily exercises were quite simple, but after moving around for a bit, I felt very good. Sitting around is my enemy! (boo on doing that all day at work)
My kids had their first day of school cancelled due to snow of the year! Crazy!!
At night I attended a financial planning seminar with my husband. We got a fancy dinner, and it was held at a casino. As we left the casino I decided to try my luck on the slots machine. Note, I don’t typically go to casinos so I had no idea what was going on. I put a dollar in the slot machine and hit some buttons. I saw that I was winning, so I cashed out. I made 10 cents. Bahahahaha!!!!
Wednesday – 4 miles treadmill. Was feeling a lot better tightness/stiffness/pain-wise. Ran an extra mile just to test the waters.
Did my HHT plan exercises today – and then realize I’m supposed to be doing the “daily” exercises twice; morning and night! This plan is going to keep me busy. I also did the first round of “weekly” exercises, which are to happen twice a week. I was challenged by the side steps and skaters with bands.
Thursday – rest day! Was shocked to wake up with no soreness today due to Wed’s PT exercises. That’s a great thing! The bad thing was I had THE WORST DAY EVER at work. I really could have used some good endorphins. I kid you not, if you can think of the worst thing ever to happen at your job – that happened to me. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I learned a made a terrible mistake (I accidentally deleted a huge table of production data, whoops!). Luckily, I eventually fixed it, but it was not pretty.
Friday – 6 miles, trails. I had a hard time getting out of bed on my day off! Well, I did wake up to get the kids ready for school, but then I crawled back into bed for a little more rest 🙂 Finally I made it out to the trails. I capped my run at 6 miles so I wouldn’t hurt that much. It wasn’t too bad, but running in the snow was a bit of a different challenge and 6 miles was enough!
The pain afterward was very limited so I was happy about that. I love how thumbholes make perfect spots for your watch when you still want to watch to be touching your skin for heart rate monitoring!
Saturday – 4 miles, treadmill. I decided to get a few miles in on the treadmill this morning before we went to see the marching band perform in the holiday parade. Took my new Saucony Freedom ISO 2 shoes for a spin. They are comfy! These were suggested to me as a more durable option to the Kinvara. The sole has more rubber or reinforcement. My goal is to get 400 miles on my old Kinvaras and I use them on the treadmill! I’m up to 325 miles now.
Brrr, the parade was long!! We stood around in the cold for almost 2 hours before we saw the band. They were good though and we saw a few of our friends as “Distinguished Clowns” passing out candy to the kids. Distinguished Clowns are people from the business community, dressed as clowns, doing good deeds.
Sunday – 6 more miles, treadmill. Had super loose plans to run at the park with Alan and friends, but Alan has been struggling with PF, so it was a no go. Whomp whomp. But, no worries, I’m on a new goal to get caught up on the Good Place show, so that’s my treadmill entertainment!
And that wraps up our first snowy week! The snow should be melted soon and I’ll finally bring in my garden stuff and everything else I left outside 🙂
Need some more inspiration? I’m linking up with Deborah at Confessions of a Mother Runner and Kim from Running on the Fly for their Weekly Run Down. Check out all of the fun blogs there!
Q: Does anyone have any quick fixes for PF??
Who am I kidding? – he’ll even take the kind that takes a month to fix. Just some progress is needed!
Q: How was the snow where you live?
I’ve mentioned this on others’ blogs (who are seeking ides on PF)…has he ever tried massaging his arches first thing in the morning? Like, before he even steps foot onto the floor? That was probably the biggest “fix” for me because it helped loosen up the fascia before the unforgiving floor made any contact. Every case is different, and what works for one may be a fail for someone else LOL Hope he gets some relief! I have a similar hamstring issue where you described…and ((DUH)), I have been sitting a lot at work recently. I have a convertible stand-up desk, but have been ignoring that feature. My bad.Thanks for the light bulb moment 🙂
I will remind him to do the stretching first thing! I have also heard that wearing shoes all day (in the house) will help too, but he hasn’t done that yet. My hamstrings are happy when I am able to sit cross legged (“indian style”) at work. No problems there! But when I have to cross my legs “lady like”, it’s the worst. I need to make sure I wear pants or skirts where I can make them happy!
Ugh–my 2 least favorite running injuries–HHT and PF. Have had them both. PF is ridiculous and I had it for almost 6 months one year. I’m sure everyone will give you their advice about how to get rid of it. Believe me when I tell you I tried everything. PF will go away when it wants to. I stopped running and did deep water running for about 6 weeks and that is when it finally went away.
You are definitely on the right track with hip strengthening for that HHT. I think stretching just makes it worse. My strength coach is always making me do hip work. I swear, the maintenance is so much work!
All of the maintenance work does take forever! At least I’m not pressed for time with other workouts for a training plan right now. So I’m hoping this will all be much better by January, when marathon training starts again!
Alan has been able to bike, and we have a trainer in our basement so that is keeping him busy. But of course he misses the running 🙁
The spot where your hamstring hurts is a similar issue to what I have. Can you please send me the info on the ebook as week? Either email or FB message I would love to check it out. Hope we are both feeling better soon!
I’ll post it here too, in case it might help someone else. Caroline Jordan is the trainer and she has two videos on YouTube now with exercises. I’ve done the first one a lot, and it helped! (until I was back at it, doing annoying things) I haven’t tried the 2nd one yet because I started with her ebook. Here’s a link to the first one:
https://youtu.be/nw8rIKZ0oII
I hope it helps you!
I’m glad you found something that will *fingers crossed* help you! but ugh on Alan’s PF 🙁 that’s a bummer. it CAN take a while to fix.
so something happened to me at work that is like the worst thing that can happen. So I totally get that you must have felt awful. I work in treasury and I didn’t catch something that ended up being a fraudulent transaction. And it was a LOT of money. I mean a LOT. But no one thinks it’s my fault, certainly not my managers, but I still feel really bad about it. I’m normally really sharp with this stuff but I’ve not been myself lately 🙁
we have no snow yet! and better to keep it that way. I do not envy you all!!
Oh yes, I can imagine you felt the same as I did! That sucks!! I really thought I was going to pass out when I realized all of the data was gone!!! I know that’s why we have backups, but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know?
I hope the strength training helps! At least you are still able to keep running through it.
A few years ago it was really bad and I had to stop for awhile. I also had to take a year off running farther than a half. Hopefully I can keep going this time!
Not happy to hear about your injuries. I hope you find a fix and soon!
You are still pretty active. Good your you and you have a great attitude.
Love your casino experience…it is exactly like mine.
We had a good laugh about my winnings! It went straight into the “found money” jar. Saving up for a trip to the donut shop 🙂
I know for me, dry needling worked like a charm on my PF. I swear it works on everything. I know a friend who had it done on HHT too. I hope everyone is healed up soon.
That’s interesting. We’ve never had dry needling done for any injuries. I’ll need to research that option!
Ugh to both HHT and PF! Sorry you’re both dealing with those injuries. I just had dinner with a friend last night who’s literally tried everything under the sun for his PF – He’s finally finding some relief with a chiro who is using percussive therapy.
I’m curious to learn more about that ebook. I saw you posted the link above – thanks! Hope the workouts do the trick for you!
I had to google percussive therapy. I’m all in the know now 🙂 I can tell it’s the first release of the ebook due to a few discrepancies I’ve found, but so far (week 2 of 16!) things are going pretty good. I had a slightly similar plan from my PT a few years ago, but I couldn’t find the entire progression of the exercises (from easy to more challenging as the weeks went on), so this was a good find for me.
So sorry that you both a dealing with injuries right now. My husband has chronic PF, and has finally had a pretty stable six months of relief from it, the longest in the entire time that I’ve known him. The one gadget that he really likes is the R3 roller from Roll Recovery, things started getting better as soon as he started using it BUT he was also doing a thousand other things and from what I’ve seen, it’s a matter of doing everything and anything that you can possibly think of. I am so paranoid at the first sign of foot pain.
Thank goodness that you don’t have to take time off from running for HHT though it would be nice if you weren’t dealing with that right now (and if a $30 ebook is part of the cure that’s worth it a thousand times over). Eek on the snow, we had our first big storm here this week.
That looks like a very good design for the R3 roller. I should stop by my running store and see what options they have in store! He has shoe insoles that were helping him for a long time, but something just flared it up this time. Ugh.
Snow? Snow days?? Ugh!
Are you finding the HHT stuff is working, then? I think i have a touch of it and certainly stretching at yoga makes it worse and doing some squats seemed to relieve it …
The exercises have helped! Squats are not great for me, but there are some in this plan. I’ll have to ease into those. Otherwise, I cringe at the thought of having to touch my toes or do any yoga. I’m totally avoiding that!
Oh great, thank you – I have found her video and I’m going to try those exercises first and see how I go. Glad you’re getting some relief!
i hope your new plan helps you get rid of your hamstring issues for good! We havent had any snow yet but its been colder than I’d like for this time of year.
The snow is melting today and I keep thinking it’s spring as I look out the window! Well, except for my neighbors full blown Christmas display. Too early 😉
I struggled with that same hamstring issue. The strength conditioning will definitely help but I did not get complete relief until my sports chiro adjusted my pelvis. Now when I feel it pulling, I go in, get adjusted and it’s GONE!
We had almost 6″ of snow here last week and then another 4 or so. I was happy we dodged yesterday’s forecast “wintery mix”.
Hmmm, an adjustment? I haven’t been to a chiropractor (other than a looooong time ago for a back spasm). I might need to give that one a try.
We haven’t really had much snow yet, but we’re supposed to get our second round of wintry mix tonight. Blech. I do not feel like running today, but I’m gonna suck it up & do it anyway (although I was seriously considering putting it off til tomorrow & running on the mill).
I have pain in that area, too. It’s very mild, and has been going on on & off for literally years. I’ve never really quite figured out what it is. I thought maybe piriformis, but what you describe sounds familiar too. I’m looking at the link you provided — thanks! So far, knock on wood, haven’t dealt with PF.
I don’t have any trouble getting out of bed. Getting out the door, that’s a whole nother thing.
I’m a complete basement dweller in the cold. It takes so long to get bundled up (and motivated!) to get out the door. I can’t even remember a time that I didn’t feel a little pain in that area. It’s really been hanging around too long. Hopefully I can get it gone for good!
The snow looks pretty, but I’m happy to enjoy your pictures! Sorry about the HHT but it sounds like you have a good plan for recovery. Did the e-book have good exercises for you? It seems so wrong to hold a financial planning seminar at a casino! LOL at your big winnings. 🙂
The casino location was pretty funny – but I have a good feeling that all the attendees rarely gamble! It was for retirement planning. I’m sure we were the youngest people there!
The ebook has been a good thing for me so far. Luckily the exercises don’t take much time right now. It’s always a drag when you have 20 mins of rehab exercises. That really zaps the motivation to continue. I totally lose interest.
That snow!!!
We are in NE Florida. We have had rain and it’s been in the 40s so it’s cold as heck, but it’s not snow. I would love to see some.
PF is ugly. I had it for about 6months on and off a few years ago and I was so happy to be rid of it.
I’m sorry about your bad day. That sounds terrible and while I’m glad you got it fixed, I can just imagine the sinking feeling you must have had when you realized the mistake.
40 degrees is cold for Florida! It sure was the worst day ever. I’m still tip toeing around thinking someone is going to find some data missing!!!
I also have PF. I bought a gun massager to use on my arch, rest of the foot, and calf. And because it feels so good, I use it on the quads, neck, and even my arms. Yep, pretty much everywhere. I have a few Oiselle tops with a watch window for my Garmin. We had snow last week (??) but it melted already. 🙂
What brand/model massager do you have? Those look very useful!
I got mine from Amazon. This is the one I have: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TVCF86M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
We had a few snow flurries last Tuesday, but that was it, it melted as soon as it hit the ground.
Your new Saucony’s are gorgeous!
I had PF for two years and did all the PT exercises on my own before going to a doctor. He prescribed PT for me and after about six weeks that hadn’t helped at all. Next, he suggested custom orthotics and within two weeks the pain was gone and nine years later it still hasn’t come back. I eventually bought a second pair of orthotics so I don’t have to change them from running shoes to other running shoes I wear for work. They’re very expensive (mine were $450 per pair and insurance wouldn’t pay a penny), but they certainly worked for me and have lasted for years. Perhaps your husband could start by trying the cheaper inserts if he doesn’t use them already.