It’s a little over a month until my first Spartan race of the year and already I am dealing with an injury. Now, I am a firm believer that we know best what our bodies wants or needs. For the most part, that is true…

But not always.

At the onset of the COLD weather, I started experiencing sciatic pain in my left hip. For the most part, this pain seemed to be brought on by the cold and resolve once out of the cold. However, as the cold weather persisted, it seemed that my body was losing its ability to recover. The pain would linger for longer and longer time periods and the previous faint, occasional left knee discomfort I’d been experiencing for many months was now sending strong signals whenever my ailment was amiss. In early December, it became apparent that something was definitely not right. The level of low back pain I generally experience on a daily basis had really started to get out of hand. On top of that, my right hip would sometimes feel the pain instead of the left. In fact, on one occasion, my sweetie’s response, when asked why he insisted on walking behind me out of a restaurant only to walk ahead as soon as we were out the door – was that I walked too slow.  *sniffle*  How he could not know that it was because I was in pain, I don’t know. That’s NOT the point. The point is that it had reached the point where it was affecting my activities of daily living (ADLs).

Deep down, I knew that I should bite the bullet, so to speak, and see my chiropractor. Instead, I decided that I could give my body what it needed. After all, it was December and already money seemed to be oozing out my pores while I slept. So I increased my stretching and foam rolling sessions (going out a purchasing a massage ball that uses high-frequency vibration). I probably would have fallen apart sooner than I did but I also added more hip strengthening and stability exercises to my fitness regimen.

I had somewhat good days, and BAD days. Until the day it all changed. [Read more…]