Catching Up with the Wissahickon Park

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Photos from winter 2016-2017.

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Why is Physical Therapy a Group Activity?

Well, my running is still curtailed by this pesky hip problem which has now become a literal pain in the butt..some sort of piriformis/sacroliliac/who-knows-what syndrome  (that’s HKWS) that’s causing pain in my, um, derriere and halfway down my leg on one side.  But enough about that..what I really want to whine about in this post is PT.   I’ve been thinking a lot about why I dislike PT so much.  Sure, there are the usual intellectual reasons..the huge amount of time it takes, the fact that each visit costs me the same as a doctor visit but there are 8 or 12 times as many of them; the fact that it often amounts to nothing more than supervised exercise..but lately I’ve been noticing that it’s not just the rational objections that make me dread it.  There is something sort of unpleasant and stress-indusing about the whole experience, and I think I’ve figured out part of it.  It’s the togetherness.  When I go to a doctor, it’s pretty much a private 1-1 experience.  But when I go to the PT, I’m there in a room  with a bunch of total  strangers , all bring treated at one time, usually by the same practitioners.  That’s weird, isn’t it?  I mean, imagine going to the doctor and sharing your time slot with three other people in the same exam room?  And yeah, I  go to group exercise at the gym with people I don’t know, but PT is not like going to Zumba, where you’re basically doing a group activity and there’s music playing and it’s all happy happy.  It’s more like being in a stranger’s hospital room, where no one is having fun and you’re trying hard to ignore one another.

At my most recent therapy  session I had to do my exercises on a table about 2 feet from a guy with back trouble and try as I might, I couldn’t avoid hearing him telling the therapist all about how much pain he was in.  It felt intrusive.  And then I had to listen to the therapist having a long detailed and loud conversation with the woman on the table to my right, all about her wedding plans,  for at least 15 minutes while she performed some manual therapy.  (Believe me, there is nothing less interesting than someone else’s wedding plans. )   The therapist was, I guess, quadruple booked, so I can see how it was convenient to have everyone close together but from my standpoint, it wasn’t much fun.

I don’t know.  I suppose that PT couldn’t make economic sense if it were always 1-1 but for me it’s just one more reason to avoid it.  Anyway, I only lasted 1 session at that particular PT, and I am switching to one where, for whatever reason, there seem to be only 1 or 2 patients there at a time usually.  And if that doesn’t work out, I guess I’ll have to take the last resort and go to the ortho, which I doubt will be productive.  I suspect that what I really need is a good trigger point therapist but my insurance doesn’t cover that. That’s probably ironic, right?

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Finally a question the internet can’t answer?

So, finally, I’ve reached the point where my trochanteric pain syndrome-slash-hip bursitis-slash- IT band syndrome has made me stop running.  I’ve promised myself I’m not going to run until I can run 5 miles pain-free, and also walk and sleep pain free.  The sleeping part has been the hardest so far.  No matter how I start out sleeping, I always end up  rolling onto my affected side (the left side) which causes pressure on the affected hip and eventually an intense pain that wakes me up.  So then I roll over onto my right side and somehow that causes the same left side pain as sleeping on the left side..I’m assuming that the IT band or some other structure in there is compressing the inflamed bursa  in that position.  But  my body really, really wants to curl up on my side to sleep, even though my brain knows it’s gonna hurt.  Back-sleeping is just wrong!   Of course, it goes without saying that I asked the Internet how to keep from rolling onto my side, but all I got was advice on how to keep a baby from rolling over.  Apparently side-sleeping is bad for babies?    Anyway, unless I figure out how to somehow affix my back to the mattress,  or construct some sort of bumpers to hold me in place, I think it’s going to be a while before I can get through the night.  But meanwhile, (thanks to the internet  of course), I’ve learned that sleeping on my side is actually good for my brain.  So, there’s that.

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..and lest I forget

Autumn colors, a few weeks ago, in views from the Henry Avenue Bridge on an afternoon run.

 

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Winter is coming..

The landscape of the Wissahickon Gorge has changed from vibrant yellows and reds to black, brown and green.  Between one Saturday long run and the next, most of the trees have lost all of their leaves, and what’s left are bare branches and the evergreens..the rhododendrons, the Christmas ferns, and the few conifers dotting the slopes.  Winter is coming.

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It’s Official: Technology is Making Me Stupid

Yes, I know, I’ve blogged a lot about how technology is making my running better..GPS, running apps, podcasts, video gait analysis., blah blah.   But of course there’s a flip side..it’s also making me incompetent.  Last weekend I decided to run a 5 mile trail race.  I hadn’t signed up in advance, and was a little disorganized in the morning, and at the last minute was still picking and downloading my Podrunner mix.  I always race with something playing that has a 180 bpm cadence.  I’m not sure if it’s the right cadence for me, but it’s what I’ve gotten used to, and if I don’t have something in my ear telling me how quickly to step, my mind might start to wander and I’ll end up going slower, or so I assume.  Anyway, somehow when the gun went off I was still fiddling with my bib, struggling to re-pin it to the belt in which I keep my phone that plays my tunes.  So I got it pinned and turned around (totally ruining my plans for a fast start), and started the race.  And about a quarter mile in, the thought came to me that there was somethig weird about the music I was hearing.  It seemed familiar, but not quite.  That was the first thought.  The second thought that popped into my head was “Hey, why am I runing so slowly?”.  It dawned on me slowly, (way more slowly than it should have,) that I had accidentally pressed the half speed button on my phone and was hearing my 180 bps mix at 90 bps.  After another couple of minutes of high-powered thinking I realized that it was going to be OK, I just needed to take two steps for every beat, which isn’t that hard to do.  But really, technology is making me stupid.

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DNF versus DNS, a Tale of Three Letters

So, I had signed up for a race this weekend, and about 3 weeks ago my ITB (aka trochanteric pain syndrome aka Hip enthesopathy, aka that thing we don’t really understand) came back with a vengeance.  After a week of this, I somehow twisted my ankle..presumably because of the change in gait or weakness induced by the hip problem.  I was at a point where I could only run a couple of miles without pain, so I tried to rest, and it got a bit better, but definitely not back to normal.  According to everyone I talked to, it would be a good idea to rest for a few more weeks, but due to my pathologically responsible personality, I was very bothered by the idea of not running this race that I had signed up for.   Of course, no one else would have cared, but, well, somehow it goes against my nature to not run a race I signed up for.  But.. I also didn’t want to make things worse, since I had another race scheduled or the following weekend, so I began toying with the idea of not doing the race.  The night before , I was thinking it over and caught myself in this dysfunctional thought pattern, and reached the epiphany that I had no good reason to run that race, other than the fallacy of sunk cost.    At that point I should have just stopped thinking, gone to bed and slept late the next morning, but instead my mind kept on going.    I thought that maybe the real reason I didn’t want to run the race was that I didn’t want to DNF.  Then I thought, yeah, but if there is no shame in a DNS, then why should it be any worse, to try but fail? So, yes, in the end, I decided to run the race, figuring that a DNF would likely not be the end of the world.

I slept with an ice pack on my hip, got up and taped up my left ankle, but a knee support on my bad right knee, took an ibuprofen, and did the race.  I finished.  And although my performance was less than stellar, at least I was not DFL.  So, that was this morning.  Some time in the next 48 hours I will find out just how big a mistake I made.

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Altitude

Just returned from a week hiking and running in the Central Cascades in Oregon, in the Sisters area, Bend, and Crater Lake.  Sleeping in a transparent tent is a great way to get your sleep cycled synced with the sun..up at dawn every day.  Most of  my days went like this: rise at dawn, eat,  hike up a mountain, admire the view, eat, hike back down, eat, and go to bed at dark.   I’m still not sure if hiking uphill is good cross-training for running though.  My hips were pretty sore, but I couldn’t tell if that meant I was strengthening those hip flexors and extensors, or that my body just didn’t like  sleeping on the cold hard ground!  Most of the trails aren’t really well suited to running because of the elevation gain and the fact that there is usually a scary precipice to fall down immediately to your right or left.  But, I did run in the Hoodoo ski area, around Bend along the Deschutes, and on the Sisters trail network which was relatively flat.  I also did some running in Portland .. on the unremitting hills of Forest Park and the flat and treeless Northeast section, past pie bars,  pot stores, ayurvedic yoga studios, and telephone poles decorated with Bernie Sanders posters.  I love Portland!

Base camp in the mountains was at about 3500 feet and one or two days I hiked as high as 9000 feet.   I was curious to see what effect the altitude would have on my running, but I didn’t notice much. other than a bit more heavy breathing than usual during a run. Between the smoke from the wildfires, the dust from the drought, the dryness in the air, and the altitude, I was expecting more problems than I had.  I did, however, cut way back on my miles, since I was doing some activity every day with no rest days in between.    Oddly, or maybe not oddly, I had way more trouble on the airplane coming home…the worst ear pain ever, nausea, sore throat, headache, the whole works, and no amount of yawning or gum chewing helped.    And weirdest of all: the inside of my eustachian tubes itched like crazy on the descent.  Oh well.  Home at sea level now, and all is well.

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Hiking versus Trail Running

Normally I only go hiking when I’m injured and can’t run, but lately I’ve been thinking about hiking as cross-training for running.  Two weeks ago I went for a 10+ mile run in the morning, and then went on an 8 mile hike in the afternoon.  I found the hike much more exhausting than the run, and by the end of the hike, I was tired in a way that I never am after a run.  Last weekend I went on a similar length hike, and this time I hadn’t run beforehand.  And again, I felt really tired.  I’m not sure if significantly different muscles are used when hiking, or if it has to do with carrying a pack (although mine wasn’t very heavy.)  But one thing I notice is that the passage of time itself seems to tire me out, so if it takes me twice as long to cover the same distance hiking compared with running, I’m going to end up twice as tired.  Does that make sense at all?  I suppose it’s partly psychological…I’m easily bored and I feel impatient when hiking with a group that likes to take frequent breaks.   Or perhaps it is an issue of fueling as well.  I never take gels or any calories while running these days, but maybe I need to do so when hiking just because I’m working hard for a longer period of time.  I’m going to try to get a hike in every Sunday since my long runs are on Saturdays, and I’ll

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see if this gets better over time.  I guess  like anything else, hiking will get easier with more practice, due to a specific training effect.

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What runners want from a gym

The other day, a running friend forwarded me a survey from some company or other looking to bring a fitness facility to my area.  I ended up abandoning the survey in frustration with the unanswerable but required questions about how much I’d pay for various features, but it got me thinking.  I have two gym memberships..one gym is near my office and one near my home.  Because convenience is everything.  They both have the usual panoply of cardio and strength training equipment..the normal stuff; nothing special.  One gym has a nice pool and whirlpool, and the other has an indoor track.  Yes, it’s annoyingly curvy at 12 laps per mile, and though I sort of hate running in circles, it’s a huge advantage during unrunnable winter conditions.  Both gyms, inexplicably, have small wet and not-very-pleasant locker-rooms, which discourages hanging around after a workout, and both have barely enough space to spread out a mat in the fitness room, but basically they work fine for my needs.   But, I was thinking about how they could be better.   Here’s the very short list I came up with.

• group exercise for runners.  One of my gyms has 3 or 4 different yoga classes, and a bunch of group exercise classes which, as far as I can tell, mostly involve hopping around to music with someone yelling out what to do next.  They seem to combine some body-weight resistance with some non-resistance stuff.  But, as a distance runner, the last thing I want to do is to spend my non-running days doing high rep, low resistance exercises that might fatigue me a bit but won’t really improve my strength or cardiovascular fitness.  Instead, I need to target specific muscles to build strength where it’s needed.  The thing is that every runner I know has some sort of exercise routine, whether assigned by a doctor or PT, or self-assigned, either preventively or for a specific running injury.  And those who don’t could probably benefit from some  strength training and maybe even a bit of stretching, since we are notoriously lacking in range of motion.  But the trouble is, exercising is boring, and it isn’t social.  Running is fun.  You get outside, you see stuff, and you talk to your running mates.  Then you go home and drag out the mat and the thera-bands and do your boring exercises alone in your living room.  It would be so much better to go to the gym twice a week and do exercises for runners with other runners.  So that’s number one on my wish list.
• Number two is running gait analysis.  I don’t mean the gait analysis you get at the running store where the goal is to get you into a pair of shoes, but something more detailed and more useful.  I’ve never seen this in a fitness club or gym.  I’m guessing it wouldn’t be cost-effective for a fitness center to buy the equipment and train the staff but I wonder if it’s something they could arrange for somone to come in and do once a month or so.

I think that’s it.  I don’t think I need an alter-G, or V02 max analysis or a personal trainer or a coach, though maybe I would try a coach/trainer if they could really relate to my personal goals and help me achieve them.  Maybe a good sports massage person, too.  So next time I’m at the gym I guess I’ll put my suggestions in the suggestion box and see what happens.

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