Update on the aches and pains

Prior to my Ragnar Relay, I was starting to have some achy knee issues. As is typical for me, I experienced no pain while I was running. There’d be a lot of soreness and occasional sharp pain when I was finished. Sometimes it would even start 24 hours after a run. So, I scaled back on running and most workouts leading up to the relay. And, I found a new chiropractor who does ART to see right before the race.

A little back story: I shared some thoughts about Active Release Technique last year when I started to see a different chiropractor for help with some Plantar Fasciitis problems. Through treatment, I was able to bounce back from the PF, but did continue to see the chiropractor for treatment on other aches and pains. After a few months of treatments, the lingering issues that I had were my toe pain and my ankle pain.

I followed up with an Orthopedist that specializes in ankles and feet and we determined that my ankle issue is a nerve problem and my toe issue is a bone spur. Neither can be helped with ART, so the migration of treatment to a medical doctor was a good move.

I’ve since had an MRI in the ankle to rule out a stress fracture and then a cortisone injection. While the pinching pain is still there, it’s not as bad and nerves are complicated. My compression sleeves during my runs do seem to give me a good amount of support.

The toe is a different story – I had an injection in it back in October and thought it wasn’t giving me too much trouble except for preventing me from wearing any other shoe than a sneaker (more on that in a minute).

Back to the new chiropractor: She was recommended to me by my new running friend and the good news is that she’s close to my office, so I can actually get there during my lunch hour. YAY! The other good news is that she’s amazing. She really knows what she’s doing and she’s a runner (hello 3:10 Marathon PR!).

She watched me do a few movements (squats and such) to look at my balance and instantly said, ‘you have weak ankles’. Tell me something I don’t know, right?

So, she treated me prior to the Ragnar (and determined that the knee isn’t really the issue, I was having a lot of tightness through my right leg – which is what I had thought and why I wasn’t really concerned about continuing to run). I went back last week for another treatment when she also gave me some exercises to do at home to build up some core and ankle strength. One exercise she’s having me do is sets of shoulder presses with light weights while standing on one leg to build ankle strength. I had read about doing something similar a few months ago and thought it would help me and she confirmed it. Yay for knowing what might work for me!

She took pictures of me doing each move so I can make sure my form at home is good – It didn’t cross my mind that I should smile

I’ve got the one legged shoulder press.

A stretch on the exercise ball to get the front of my hip (I’m blanking on the official name of the tight area)

And a bridge move on the ball with a 30 second hold after 15 reps up and down to work on core strength.

I’m supposed to do these every day – 3 sets of each move. So far, I’m doing pretty good at getting it done. I’m finding that I’m much more likely to get my exercises done if I do it first thing in the morning. If I wait until the end of the day, I can find 150million things to do that are not the exercises. Since when did I become such a morning person? Maybe I get things done before my body knows what I’m doing.

But – the bad news… it’s my right leg that is super tight. Right knee pain, my calf is incredibly tight and she said that my right IT band is tight too. While most of that isn’t giving me pain at this point, it’s also the same leg of the bum toe. So… we think that I might be compensating more for the toe than I had thought. I asked her for her opinion on if I’m getting to the point that I can’t ignore this any longer and she said to give these strength exercises a chance before making any decisions.

But, my toe is giving me trouble when I don’t wear shoes. When I walk around my house without shoes, I find myself altering my step because the pinch of my big toe when taking a full size step is really uncomfortable. I put on flip flops the other day and had to change out of them immediately. It feels kind of tingly sometimes when I’ve been going barefoot.

My sneakers with my turf toe metal plate are fine And my running shoes are fine.

So, I guess I have to go back to the orthopedist. :-( Remind me to stop reading horror stories about bone spur surgery online. Dr. Google isn’t always a good thing. Does anyone ever have good surgery stories? I sure can’t find them.

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