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August 20, 2004
things we do in desperation
Yesterday I had my head adjusted.
No, really.
After a good running day and then a medium-good running day, I tried 12 yesterday morning and just dragged through it. As the day wore on, my leg got more and more tight and the PF in the other foot grew more and more tender. Luckily I'd made an appointment with a serious sports-massage therapist for late in the afternoon.
I didn't know it when I made the appointment, but the therapist practices a kind of therapy that involves manipulation of the cranium. The theory is that one of the cranial bones mirrors the pelvis, and adjusting the head bone will get the pelvic bones adjusted too. He spent a good 10 minutes gently sqeezing my head. It wasn't scary, but I wondered whether this treatment would benefit from the power of suggestion, meaning if I truly believed, I would be healed. I neither believed nor disbelieved, just lay there and wondered what I was supposed to be thinking while he squeezed my head.
After that he spent the rest of the hour on more traditional sports massage, like the kind that hurts so much you forget to breathe. I felt a lot looser by the end of the hour, and was looking forward to running 8 or 9 in the morning.
Enter the morning...started off a little sore, then 1/2-mile into the run on a dark tree lane I turned my ankle (the bad one) on a stupid piece of wood lurking in the street. Almost started crying right then and there, not from pain (it didn't hurt any more than my leg hurt already) but at the unfairness of all of it, everything. I hurled the stupid piece of wood into someone's yard and started off again, but it was just a slow depressing slog.
Sometime around mid-morning I got up from my desk for a drink of water. 50 feet down the hall I realized my leg didn't hurt at all. There was no pain for hours, then only a little tightness, so I decided to try a short easy run this evening. Again, no dice; I hurt a bit but mainly had no get-up-and-go. Once I stopped my leg felt like it was on fire. And now, hours later, it's settled down again.
I don't see a pattern yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.
Posted by joe positive at August 20, 2004 8:33 PM