Just so I have this written down…
Every time I upgrade wordpress I have to figure out how to get the files out of the tarball and into the directory where my blog lives. They tar up the wordpress files with a top level directory of wordpress/ and my files live in blog/. There are any number of hacky ways to accomplish this, however I wanted to do it with tar.
Mark clued me.
tar -C blog --strip-components=1 -zxvf wordpress-2.3.1.tar.gz
It’s time again for your twice daily update on my health!
I got up at 5:30 this morning to go to PT. When I got there there were the usual forms to fill out etc. Finally around 7:15 I was taken back to the therapist and he asked me all the usual questions about pain, where it hurt, how much I run etc.
First up were some range of motion movements for assessment purposes. He seemed astonished at how far outwardly my hips would allow my legs to go. And he was equally astonished at how poorly inwardly my legs will turn. If you have ever looked at my feet when I am standing (and you haven’t) my feet splay outward forming a V. Putting my feet straight forward actually feels like I am turning them inward, even though they are simply parallel with one another.
His greatest amazement however was saved for when he saw what my feet do when I stand on them (something I like to use them for). You see, I pronate (hey, who doesn’t!) but like everything else I do, I don’t do it half-assed, oh no, I go all the way!
His eyes got really big and he said “When you are laying down, your feet look normal. But when you stand on them, they collapse inward pretty badly”. I already knew this, it’s why I wear motion control shoes to run in. He also confirmed that my left leg is longer than my right leg. Interestingly, he mentioned that the body will compensate for the discrepancy by …pronating further. In effect my left foot (the same side as my hip) is a over pronation nightmare. He is convinced this is what has caused my problem.
The prescription is custom orthotics. I am now 250 dollars poorer, but in two weeks, I should have my new inserts.
In addition to that, my flexibility is quite bad. And this was interesting. The usual calf exercise that people do doesn’t work for over pronators, because the foot rolls under and you feel like it’s not doing anything. He had me stand with half my foot up on a 1/2 piece of wood, and do the same stretch again. That time it really hurt. Bottom line, I need to increase flexibility. I knew this, I was just being bad at it.
Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for…WHEN CAN I RUN AGAIN?!?!? Well, according to the therapist, I can go running today if I want. However he thinks that would be a bad idea ;) He wants me to take another week off and start riding the bike, and working on my flexibility. He said if I did run on it, I wouldn’t need surgery or anything, but that it would continue to hurt and remain irritated. I mentioned that I was signed up for the Jingle Bell Run on December 9th, and he thought it made sense to wait till a few days before that and try a 2 miler. If I thought I could run without causing myself pain, I could run (not race) the Jingle Bell.
I can live with that. I think Saturday I am going to join a gym. Need to cross train and lift anyway.
I feel better after talking to him, and my hip feels a little better today too.
I am sitting in my living room after having worked from home today, and I gotta say, I feel terrible.
Today was officially one week since I have gone running. Since January of this year, this is the longest I have not run by double. There is no end in sight.
Tomorrow I start PT, which I am grateful for. At least it will give me something to focus on.
Much like quitting smoking, I have reoccurring thoughts about running almost all day long. For a while I will get caught up in some piece of work and forget, but then it will occur to me and that same vague feeling of absence, of something being missing, will creep in. It’s eerie how similar the two are. Of course there is no physical addiction to keep dragging my mind back to it over and over again, and I can actively “put it off” till later.
And in this case, running is actually good for me, so not doing it has no upside.
This brings me to my last point for the day. My hip feels marginally better. And when I say marginal, I am not being goofy, I really mean it. It’s a slight degree better. This worries me. Usually with overuse problems I have had in the past, a week off would have cured it all, however a week in, and I have no idea how much longer it will take to feel “fine”. That is unnerving. The doctor said that if I am not better in 3 weeks I’ll go for an MRI. The idea that I could still be not running in 3 weeks makes me sick to my stomach.
The doctor was very to the point. I am dying. Of hip pain. Tragic.
Just kidding. The usual. Took a xray, nothing jumped out at him. He doesn’t think it’s arthritis. Could be a Labrum Tear, could be some other irritation. He also noticed that I have a small bump on the head of my femur. He said that recently (the past 4 or 5 years) this sort of bump has been associated with similar pain to what I have.
No matter what, treatment is the same, Ibuprofen and Physical Therapy. I start Therapy at 7 am Friday morning (meaning I’ll have to get up at 5:30 am) and he upped my Ibuprofen dosage to 800 mg from the 600 I prescribed.
I asked several times how soon I can start running and he dodged the question as best he could. He did say I had to wait till the pain was gone. And finally said “How about we lay off the running for a week and see how therapy goes”.
Not only all that, but, I also have one leg shorter than the other and now have to wear a lift in my right shoe. He also commented on my crazy collapsing feet (I make over pronators look like neutral strikers), and mentioned I should get orthotics. I will be evaluated for all that at PT. What a mess.
I will give it my best shot to stay off the running for another week, but I make no promises. Prepare for rationalization!
I have a 10 am (EST US) appointment today with an Orthopedist.
I have been eating ibuprofen and icing my hip like it’s my job, and it’s only marginally better. This is the 5th day in a row I haven’t exercised and I am going batty (ok, more batty).
Secretly I hope that he just jams a needle full of Cortisone in my leg and tells me to get back out there. I am positive that won’t happen ;)
The final results are in for the SMT Turkey Trot
i just ran across an interesting Runners World article that I thought others might enjoy on the subject of calories burned while running.
One of the main reasons I run is weight control, and this article discusses the main ingredients in weight control, namely calorie burning.
The most interesting calculation is the burn rate per mile for most folks, which is (for gross calorie burn) .75 * weight.
For me that works out to
177 * .75 = 132.75
That is a little more conservative that the Garmin calculates it. I guess I need to gain some weight so that I can burn more calories.
I feel like a phony. I am sitting here in my sweat clothes all packed in for the day doing nothing but having a few beers and surfing the web. I know I didn’t run or workout yesterday. Same goes for today. And on tap for tomorrow? Same thing.
I hate it, I am miserable. The only consolation is that right this minute, my hip doesn’t hurt all that bad. I am hopeful that I am on my way to recovery and this is but a blip on the screen. P.S. Ice on you groin/hip in winter…not as good as you might hope.
All this self pity led me to start surfing del.icio.us. And more importantly, running related links on del.icio.us. There are some interesting items to be mulled over there. Check them out.
One thing I wanted to cover in a post, and this post is as good as any, is the topic of speed and how it relates to one’s runningness.
Over the last year of running I have come to firmly believe that if you are miserable during a run, you are going too fast. Running, for myself and a lot of people, is very enjoyable. I don’t think I am all that different from everyone else. I think that when I started running this time I committed myself to longevity not speed, and it has made all the difference. My proudest current PR is that of having run for 10 months with out a significant break. And none of the time I have taken off is because I wanted to lay around and be lazy.
I credit my current love affair with running to three things. The first is that I transfered a lot of the ill feelings I had with smoking over to running (nice work if you can get it). The second is that I truly recognize all the wonderful things running does for my mind and body and can’t imagine my life with out it (well I can, and if it’s anything like the last few days, stuff it). Last but not least is that the very first day I put my sneakers on the ground, I said to myself that the goal was not to ever go fast or far, but to run, consistently for a long period of time. Longevity, that was my goal.
So far so good.
For the last (almost) 5 months I have been getting regular updates from a cessation support site. I stopped really reading them a while ago, and then, this morning I finally unsubscribed.
That has to be some sort of milestone right?
Happy breathing.
Having a day off and not being able to run is an exercise in masochism. I basically sat around all day thinking about running.
My friend David mentioned to me in IRC that I should hit the bike today. I guess he was right…but to me, the bike is a poor substitute for running. Not to mention, riding in the cold is waaaay worse than running in the cold.
I rode the bike over to the barracks and did two laps, then rode home. It was over 6 miles, and for all that effort and freezing I burned a mere 378 calories. Lame.
Running > Biking.
Well, I am off to do a visitors thing at the local YMCA. I am going to have to join a gym this winter, in order to stay in shape for the spring running season.
Some stats:
Distance: 6.67 Miles
Time: 41:29 (pace: 9.67 MPH)
Average Heart Rate: 106 bpm (paltry)
Calories Burned: 378
**Update** Later in the day I went to the local YMCA and did 500 calories on the bike there. It felt great and I had no ill effects afterward. **Update**
