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August 25, 2004
An injury waiting to happen
Yup, that's me, according to my chiropractor today. He watched me run back and forth for about 50 meters this afternoon and could barely contain his grimace. Let me just say this: I don't think I've ever had good running form. I remember in high school, when I first started running, one of the coaches would always be yelling at me to pick my head up and keep my shoulders down. But I've never considered that it could lead to injury, which is what Dr. Brady thinks.
After he watched me run (the first 10 minutes of the 20 minute appointment), Dr. Brady told me that my stride on both sides is extremely shortened, due to tight hamstrings. On the left (bad knee) side, I'm not even fully extending my knee and actually restricting the forward motion that I get from the stride with the right leg. In other words (well, his words) my right leg is doing 80% of the work when I run and I'm only propelling myself forward about 3 inches, when in fact it should be much further. Since people have been telling me I limped when I ran for the past few years, this is probably not a new thing but has just been worsened by the knee pain.
He also said my upper body's movement is restricted by my spine being out of alignment and I'm compensating by swinging my arms, causing my lower back and pelvis to be tight. Awesome. But despite all the bad news, Dr. Brady thinks that once he works on me for 8-10 sessions, I will feel like a different runner and my knee pain will likely be taken care of. We shall see.
Back in his office after the running experiment, I got my first chiropractic adjustment. He did both the front and back of the hips, which felt mostly like a lot of pressure. He tried to do my lower back after that but said it was still too tight to be able to adjust it. I'm going back next Monday for more fun and games. By the way, he didn't say not to run. He didn't say TO run, but I've told him what I've been doing and he doesn't seem to have an issue with it.
Anyway, despite my horrid running form, I managed to have a pretty decent run today (this was before I saw Dr. Brady.) I'm trying to follow this schedule passed on to me by jenandmats (thanks!) and I did 10 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, 10 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, 20 minutes running. My knee felt pretty good but my calf was tightening up off and on. I was able to explore the Public Garden and Boston Common as part of my run, and came back along the river, which is crowded but scenic. I also noticed that damn Citgo sign off in the distance. Somehow I never noticed it during the marathon!
Posted by becky at August 25, 2004 5:31 PM