Little to no improvement in my right leg for the past month or two, which is incredibly disheartening. My left, luckily, feels “normal,” (I’ve forgotten what normal feels like after nearly half a year of pain) so we’ve stopped treatment on it.

The treatment that I’m getting… As I mentioned before, I left the chiropractor who had been treating me for a few months… He was doing stim and a light amount of ultrasound to no effect. I’m now seeing Paul Glodzik, a chiropractic doctor who is seemingly 100% devoted to adult athletes. This is good; he understands the athlete, and is  practitioner of some of the latest and greatest techniques. I had been receiving tips from Max Lockwood, local elite runner, and Georgetown Running Company owner to visit him, and finally Dr. Paul came in to chat with our trainees about injuries and injury prevention so I decided it was time to introduce myself and set something up.

We started with Active Release Techniques, which basically was him pinning each tendon (with his thumb) in several places and then forcing my leg through full motion. He’s also a professional rugby player… I was sweating in pain, and he was sweating in exertion… That’s how tight my hamstrings are. After a few visits, we weren’t seeing any improvement so we moved on…

The Graston Technique is yet another state-of-the-art sports injury treatment technique, and it was our next step. We’re now cooking with fire. The quick of it is that I’m basically rubbed so hard with a metal pole over and over again that all the tissue turns into jello and rebuilds, but correctly this time. After the first treatment, it took a good five days before the bruises faded and my leg didn’t hurt [from the treatment]. Unfortunately, after three days or so the pain [from injury] was back and I was as tight as ever… Also unfortunate, it was a holiday week so I couldn’t seen him for another week. Yesterday was the second treatment. Based on how I was feeling, the thought is that we gave me too much time to heal back up before giving another shock to the system and getting deeper. Today aside from the soreness from the treatment, I’ve been feeling fairly loose. I even ran down to the store and back (quarter mile)! Super unfortunate, it’s another holiday week and they’re moving offices so I can’t see him again for another week… Oh well, eventually we’ll get to meet two times in a week and hopefully then we’ll start seeing some major progress.

Athletically I have been doing nothing, and the scale shows. It’s too cold to go on lengthy bike rides, our work gym is awful, and I can only swim so much… Tomorrow I’m going to bite the bullet and sign up at Gold’s in Ballston. Not excited about it as I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth about that location, but it’s closest to home, work, and better than my other options. I’d really like to get back to the rock gym, but a taut hamstring doesn’t lend itself to climbing too well AND I don’t have anybody to go with. Blech.

On the running front, I can tell I’m likely not running at all this winter. Major bummer… Running more or less defined me… I’ll have not done it in nearly half a year. I’m extra worried that my scheduled marathon, Steamtown, will not be a Boston bid, but instead just a “get through it.” It isn’t until October, but marathon training is four months, I need a three month solid base before jumping into that, and I’d say I’ve lost at least another three months of fitness or so… Yep, that means I’d likely need to get going tomorrow to give it a serious shot. Not happy. I’m also unable to compete for the club racing series, which I’ve won biannually three straight times now.

If things never improve, I’ll likely take up mountain bike racing. I’ve done it before and thoroughly enjoy it. Once I got the skills down, I think I might be pretty decent as well given my strong cardio background.