101. Wk14 - The 'Pop' Heard Around the World

For anyone following my updates the last few months, you'll be well aware that I've had a hip problem. In fact it's deep in my ass, and it has not been fun trying to train and run on this. Since the start of December (for pretty much 3 months), it has been far from right in that neck of the woods.

I've been limping while walking; limping while running; rolling my ass on lacrosse balls (far from fucking fun with this injury, I can tell you); rolling my back; stretching my hamstrings; deep stretching my glutes and hips; getting crunched on the osteo table; getting elbow-deep massage on the physio table; doing glute strengthening; and finally resorted to mashing the hell out of it with a metal bar (Graston technique). All in the aim to loosen the damn thing off enough for it to click into place.

You may be happy to hear that I've managed to pop whatever it was back into place now... and boy, was it a big one.

I'll rewind to events leading up to the moment I've been waiting for a few days. Having Covid two weeks earlier and having to take it much easier while recovering certainly helped. The moment came though with the storms in the UK last week. That forced me to take the entire weekend off running as it was simply too dangerous to get a 20k trail run in. That forced me to rest up some more and do some intense work on heating, stretching and scraping (using the Graston metal bar I mentioned earlier) over the space of 3 days. Early on Monday this week, I took a chance the moment I woke up (and when my back is the most relaxed it can get) to perform a 'cricketer's stretch' with an added twist before I got up... And holy shit there was a pop! Not just the satisfying click you sometimes get in your neck, back, ankle, etc. No, no. This was a deeeeeeep one. So deep it sounded like two bowling balls smacking into one another. It was at the side of my tailbone, and the top of my hip joint. And it was, loud. So loud it woke my wife up, and I'm sure it rattled the windows and got the dog barking up a storm from her bed in the kitchen, thinking my town was being bombed! (I exaggerate, of course, but the point was it was really f*cking loud!)

My immediate response was alarm, and for a split second the thought crossed my mind I'd popped my hip out entirely; but that was replaced with near immediate relief in my back and me having a eureka moment that saw me shouting out 'I knew it!!!' at 6 in the morning.

One thing when you are prone to injury is that you know your body very well indeed. I had been saying for months I need to pop something back in and that something felt 'out', that was why the pain was simply getting no better despite periods of rest, treatment, rehab, etc. And the relief was immediate. The joint felt so much better. But the muscles responded by getting very tight very quickly while they were trying to figure out what to do about what the hell just happened. This has given me a different type of pain, but that was a good sign. Muscle problems and tightness are so much easier to deal with than joint issues in my experience.

Knowing I was visiting my Physio ( which I've fondly renamed 'Ellie's House of Pain') the day after, the main thing was making sure that it didn't get pulled back out before I had the pro's get their hands and elbows on my over-tight ass. This meant my plan to run had to be put on ice for a few days, out of the risk of having the tight muscles pull the hip back out before I'd had a chance to get therapy on it. Frustrating but wise, as I can catch those miles back up, now i know the big issue of the day is solved.

During the physio appointment, an enthused Ellie-The-Physio decided that we needed to act fast and get the muscles out of the bad habit they'd been in for 3 months... and that meant pain. A lot of it.

The kind of physical therapy pain that breaks you into a sweat, has you sob quietly to yourself, and sees you hold your breath until you begin to black out. The glint in her eye was unsettling, the tears in mine were real.

But it was good. Really good. Pain is a big part of life when doing stupid things as you are getting older. The term 'Play stupid games, win stupid prizes' is not unfamiliar to me the last couple of years... But the relief was significant. I still have instructions to use the Lacrosse-ball-of-terror daily on my ass for now, but the change has been for the better and has been swift. This is great news! Not a huge amount training wise to speak of this week, though. I managed to get a 5k run in during the week, with another on the cards and a planned 20K trail long run in for the weekend (followed by a 10k the day after). This will bring me close to being back on track with my plan, and in the circumstances, I am counting this as a win!

Weight Loss Update

My weight-loss is hovering just over 100kg (220 Ibs), but this will start moving now. I can feel it already through this week with the fasting and cleaning up after my 'holiday-diet' last week. I'm slotting in 3x 24hr fasts this week to shock the system into fat-burning. It's becoming pretty easy to finish dinner the night before and not eat until the following evening. Coffee is my saviour, as is keeping busy with work. The one thing I notice is I get a headache towards the end of the 24hrs (which means I need to up the water intake). All in all, the dramatically reduced training load, covid and holiday eating (basically anything to keep energy up) has had very little negative impact on my weight. This is despite losing most of the month of February to these factors and events. If I go back a year, this would have seen the needle shift north on the scales faster than a rat up a drainpipe. Now, it's having less of an impact. What I'm doing looks to be working. I just need to keep working the way I have been with: ACV (apple cider vinegar) and my pro-biotics each morning; going easy on the carbs for most of the week; a couple of fasting days; and getting moving. The increased mileage once more will help shift things along. Thanks for reading.