On your own

I've always been a solo type person, I adore my alone time and don't have a problem doing things by myself. Which is probably one of the reasons why I love running, for the most part it's my alone time, my time to actually think about things without being interrupted to handle someone's needs. I spend a lot of time making sure that I take care of my body and try my best to remain injury free by stretching, icing, foam rolling, compression and a bounty of other helpful things. So when I find myself with an unidentified injury and I am trying to make the best decisions for myself, my body and my training to move forward I realized that I felt alone. My sports medicine doctor has a plan that doesn't really work for me. In the past his plans have worked brilliantly for recovery, but this time around I don't have the time to actually follow his plan as I'm in week one of 1/2 Marathon training. I have been super frustrated and trying to find the perfect balance to keep me on track, heal my injury and not make it worse. My Chiropractor was only so much help this time around. In 2010 he kept me healthy and on track through all of my training which was awesome. However, after my last visit it was evident that I wasn't getting what I needed from him either.

It comes down to a muscular injury or a stress fracture, a muscle injury I know I can work with and get through my training, If it's a stress fracture on the hand, I know I need to follow Doctor's orders. Early this week I went in for an x-ray to help me make a more educated decision since I was not getting the support I needed from the medical community. I realize, that a stress fracture may not show up on a normal x-ray, but I also already knew that I wasn't going to push for a bone scan, not worth my time or co-pays. After several phone calls on my part with no return answers from my substitute physician (my primary care doc is on yet another medical leave) I finally got the assistant to eek out an "it looks okay" after reading the x-ray results. That was the answer I needed to run today.

It's been 2 1/2 weeks since I last ran, I've been following doctor's orders on everything else as far as walking, biking and PT exercises. But I most certainly was not going to wait another 2 weeks to test it out. This morning I applied Rock Tape, put on the compression socks and donned my running gear. I headed out to my favorite portion of the local trail so as to not attempt the up and downhill running of my street on my first time out. Since I'm on my own here I decided that 2/2 run/walk intervals seemed like a good place to start, so I set my Forerunner up for those intervals. Surprisingly, I managed to get all three miles in today and I only had one time on my second run interval where I had to slow to a walk for an extra minute. Otherwise, my plan seemed to have work.

I'm not sure if today's efforts gave me enough endorphins to not be a total bitch later today with the family, but hopefully it's a start. I did feel the injury, but it feels much better than the last time I tried to run on it and so far this afternoon, it still feels good. Hopefully it continues to feel that way after I take my compression socks off.

I am hopeful that I can accomplish Sunday's 4 miler in the same fashion. This has been a truly difficult 3 weeks for me. I've learned that while I really like my current physicians I really need a primary care doctor who gets what I am trying to accomplish, I need to feel supported in my decisions, and I need to know that  someone understand why I am making these decisions.

With that in mind, I have an appointment with someone who specializes in ART and athletes, her resume is very impressive and I look forward to seeing how she can help me. Moving forward, I think it's time to find a new primary care physician, I've been seeing him since I was 19, but he has also been on medical leave twice in the past year, forcing me to someone else. I'm hoping that I can find a new primary care  physician that understands my goals and will work with me to best achieve those.

I'll keep plugging away and still hold hope that there is a 1/2 Marathon PR in my future for 2012.