Denouement

Could not stay asleep!  Woke up at 3am.  Got out of bed at 3:40 and got ready for work.  

Went to a sports PT today.  Steve Orrock is a marathoner and a sports PT, and owns a sports therapy center.  Unfortunately he wasn't there this morning.  Karen, who worked on me, said the pain is not in the SI, but lower, closer to the tailbone, ligaments down there.  She had me do lots of different reaches, and said my weakness is in crossward motion, and had me do exercises where I am crossing my body, three types which I need to do three times a day.  She and her helper also did heat, asym, massage, ultrasound, and icing to finish up.  I am just as sore as yesterday.  Not really seeing progress.

Does walking count as cross training?

I had a follow up with Dr. McLane, felt better yesterday than I have for a couple of weeks, but this morning on the xray table I was in pain while rolling hips around, the table was really hard.  So then she wanted to have me replicate on the doctors table and I kept rolling around different ways and couldn't replicate the pain.  Soreness but no PAIN.  I felt like a moron, really.  We discussed where I hurt and what the PT said, and Dr. McLane doesn't think its that lower ligament, but my perioformis or whatever the name is muscle in my deep glute, and that perhaps my sciatic is running right through it, and there's scar tissue causing the sciatic to get tweaked.  But I got to witness her and her fellow doctor discuss my symptoms and they seemed highly uncertain and perplexed.  They are recommending graston, very deep, deep massage, stretching and cleared me to crosstrain.  She said soreness is not a problem with crosstraining, neither is me getting pain at other times in the day, but if I get the sharp pain or leg tightness while crosstraining or running to stop.  She seemed to even clear me for running but I am not falling for that.  I used to think that doctors were conservative and told us to not run at a drop of a hat.  Now I am wary when they say go ahead and run.

Anyway, I've been doing PT exercises 3x per day, plank ab position holds to ease my abs out of the atrophy spiral.  I'll add other ab plank variations that don't put pressure on one side of my body.  I am spending almost as much time between these things and doctors appointments (I have two PT and one dr appt this week).

I walked another mile with the kids later in the evening.

Pool ran, nice and easy for 30 minutes.  I figure not good for more than 2.5.  HR at the end was 88, proof I didn't go too hard.  I figured I'd hit the pool and make myself take it easy and just let my legs get used to moving again.  I did have to remind myself to take it easy, but was successful.  Butt felt fine.  I did my PT exercises and some stretching after in the weight area (this is all at the Lehi Legacy center).  There were about 5-6 guys in there and they didn't know quite what to make of me (she invades our turf to stretch and do some lame-o exercises????).  Doing one exercise on the ground felt fine during the exercise, but hurt when trying to get up.  Being on a hard surface and rolling around is the only thing that hurts my SI right now.  

Better get back to work.

PT appt in the morning.  Met Steve Orrock. He didn't agree with Dr. McLane's latest theory of the sciatic running through the piriformis because when I stretched the piri it didn't generate the pain.  He was able to (very craftily!) replicate the pain radiating down my leg, and at that point started to think it has a sciatic component.  He dug hard into my bum and my upper ham, so I felt like I was getting my money's worth.  He had me do some type of stress test on the bike:

5 min easy spin with little resistance, then increase resistance to slight uphill feel, then increase the resistance every minute five times, at 11 minutes go up of my seat at that high resistance and bike for 5 more minutes, then 2 min easy spin w little resistance to cool down. Got my heart rate up to 178 at the end (he didn't tell me to, but I measured during the 2 minute easy cool down).  I am not sure what he was testing, except perhaps how out of shape I was.  It was nice to have athletic trainers standing around while I breathe hard and work up a sweat.  

Then he had me walk on the treadmill to look at my gait, then had me run (not nearly long enough :)) and took camera of me.  It was my first time seeing myself run on video in a long time, and it was downright shocking to see the degree to which I heel strike.  I can see the whole bottom of my foot from the front view, even the heel, when I strike.  It was downright ugly.  Sometimes you have to see it to believe it. So walked/ran .8 there, then had to walk my car to/from the shop later in the day.  

My PT appt took 2 hours, and I still got in 13.55 hours of work which means I got home after 11pm last night.  I was exhausted, but my bum was only slightly sore, no acute pain, which tends to come on if I work myself into the ground. 

I am supposed to do my PT exercises three times a day, but only did them twice.  Once on a piece of grass behind a church after picking up my car in my work clothes, and once again in my work clothes at 11:15pm.

Steve Orrock told me to bike 60 minutes today, this was after my bike test yesterday.  So, that seems like too much of a jump in cross training and I debated as I biked stationary if I should really do 60 or do less, but in the end I did 60.  I started out pushing it a bit much, but after checking my heart rate manually (which I did about 5 times and it always was within 5 of the machine) and coming in at 150 16 minutes into the workout, I knew I shouldn't have too high of a heartrate and 60 minutes on the bike, one had to give, so I kept it under 140 for the rest of the bike workout.  Dull as heck, but at least I had music and the lame-o competitive joy of knowing everyone in the cardio workout left before I did.  I get competitive even in scenarios like that.  I had some woman on the bike next to me for the first half and it showed distance traveled for the two of us and I was catching up to her before she stopped.  Pretty lame of me but it's so dull on equipment.

Since it was raining and Paul wasn't home I hired a girl in my ward to swim with the kids at the Lehi aquatic center while I worked out, then I did my PT exercises and stretched, then changed into my bathing suit and joined them in the pool.  It is nice to hit the pool after working out. It's been 3 hours since I finished the workout and my bum still feels good.  No sharp pain (put a pad under my bum for the PT exercise this time), and only some very slight soreness/or tightness.