Ultra Running Information and Tips
As humans we are creatures of habit.  Creating habits help us move through our daily lives more easily.  For example, I always hang up my keys by the fridge and I charge my cell phone every night.  When we come upon or develop a really helpful habit we tend to give it a higher status and make it a rule.  For example, don’t hit on a woman when her husband or your wife is around.  These rules ultimately help us survive. We make different rules for different reasons.  The three second or ten second rule exists because if you are hungry you can still eat that piece of food you dropped.  Other rules exist for yet other reasons. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. There is talk about rules being made to be broken. I don’t know. I think you break them at your own peril. Before I really get too far down this rabbit hole let me say that no sooner than I break a rule - my own rule no less (by writing down or telling others what I’m planning on running, see a prior posting), I go down with an injury. Toward the end of December I started to experience some discomfort in my right glute. That discomfort grew into a flaming pain in the ass, also known as Piriformis Syndrome. Having spend over 30 years running I knew I had to go see a physical therapist who knew what they were doing and would do what I needed - more hands on body work and less time on the clock spent doing core strengthening exercises. Dr. Farouk Elkassed of Access Physical Therapy (aka The House of Pain) was just the man for the task. After a few weeks of physical therapy the symptoms lessened but a throbbing pain in my right shin could only be explained by some type of back injury. To make a long and honestly boring story short x-rays confirmed that I have a 4 mm misalignment between my Lumbar spine and my sacrum. While it’s been that way for close to ten years, somehow (I suspect rule breaking) it got inflamed and subsequently, it’s condition was duly noted. Yesterday I got a selective transforaminal nerve root block in the L1 S5 region or a shot. Oh boy, that was some good fun.  I asked for a copy of the video but the tech said they couldn’t due to HIPAA “rules”.  I guess they thought somehow a stereotactic x-ray of my lower back and upper ass would provide “individually identifiable health information”. Dr. Ken Hurt (not his real name) says I should be good to start running again on Saturday, Feb 19th. This puts me several months behind in my training and has caused me to have to really change my plans for the first half of 2011. Don’t stay tuned because I’m not gonna make the same mistake twice and publicly announce all my racing plans, at least not this year. 2/17/2011

As humans we are creatures of habit.  Creating habits help us move through our daily lives more easily.  For example, I always hang up my keys by the fridge and I charge my cell phone every night.  When we come upon or develop a really helpful habit we tend to give it a higher status and make it a rule.  For example, don’t hit on a woman when her husband or your wife is around.  These rules ultimately help us survive.

We make different rules for different reasons.  The three second or ten second rule exists because if you are hungry you can still eat that piece of food you dropped.  Other rules exist for yet other reasons.

The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.

There is talk about rules being made to be broken. I don’t know. I think you break them at your own peril. Before I really get too far down this rabbit hole let me say that no sooner than I break a rule - my own rule no less (by writing down or telling others what I’m planning on running, see a prior posting), I go down with an injury.

Toward the end of December I started to experience some discomfort in my right glute. That discomfort grew into a flaming pain in the ass, also known as Piriformis Syndrome.

Having spend over 30 years running I knew I had to go see a physical therapist who knew what they were doing and would do what I needed - more hands on body work and less time on the clock spent doing core strengthening exercises. Dr. Farouk Elkassed of Access Physical Therapy (aka The House of Pain) was just the man for the task. After a few weeks of physical therapy the symptoms lessened but a throbbing pain in my right shin could only be explained by some type of back injury.

To make a long and honestly boring story short x-rays confirmed that I have a 4 mm misalignment between my Lumbar spine and my sacrum. While it’s been that way for close to ten years, somehow (I suspect rule breaking) it got inflamed and subsequently, it’s condition was duly noted.

Yesterday I got a selective transforaminal nerve root block in the L1 S5 region or a shot. Oh boy, that was some good fun.  I asked for a copy of the video but the tech said they couldn’t due to HIPAA “rules”.  I guess they thought somehow a stereotactic x-ray of my lower back and upper ass would provide “individually identifiable health information”. Dr. Ken Hurt (not his real name) says I should be good to start running again on Saturday, Feb 19th. This puts me several months behind in my training and has caused me to have to really change my plans for the first half of 2011. Don’t stay tuned because I’m not gonna make the same mistake twice and publicly announce all my racing plans, at least not this year.

2/17/2011

Posted 1 year ago