Wednesday, January 27, 2010

“If you were a horse, we would have shot you by now.”

That statement (written by my coach) is both hilarious and upsetting.

Don’t you worry – no animals were harmed in the writing of this post. My fitness, however, may be counted as a casualty. Ditto regarding my sanity, self-respect, and justification to eat cake (actually, who am I kidding? Nothing can quell my cake-hunger!).

So what’s wrong with my hamstring, you may be wondering? I WISH I KNEW. It hurts when I run. It hurts more when I take time off running. It hurts when I stretch. It hurts when I leave it alone.

I won’t bore you with the details - sorry to be such a Debbie-Downer. I’m just in a state of major long-term bummed out-ness.

Thus, I will clue you into parts of yesterday’s email exchange with my coach, because though I’ve *almost* lost all hope, it may not be too late for you to save yourselves. So take a lesson from me:

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Molllie wrote:

Hi  Coach,

"Broken down and injured"...sounds familiar.  

Mollie

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01/26/10 10:20 AM from Coach

If you were a horse, we would have shot you by now. :)

Just ease your way back into the running and keep babying your hammy until you're sure you're ready to do some fast stuff on it. Have you been using a foam roller or massage stick to work on it? If not, you should.

I hope to see you soon.

Coach

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On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 11:19 AM,Mollie wrote:

Haha, that is HILARIOUS (and upsetting).

I've been foam rolling, icing, and getting sports massage once a week. I'm definitely trying to be "smart" about dealing with this...so there's that. I'll let you know when I'm functioning again!

Mollie

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01/26/10 11:42 AM from Coach

Are your shoes in good shape? Also, be careful about how you remove your shoes. (*bold emphasis added by me*) By that I mean make sure that you untie them, bend over and remove them by hand, rather than kick them off by using the opposite foot to put pressure on the heel of the shoe and then yanking your foot out. Believe it or not, a lot of runners injure their hamstrings by consistently kicking their shoes off like that (myself included before I wised up to what was going wrong with my hamstrings).

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 On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Mollie wrote:

That is EXACTLY my problem. I didn't think of taking off my shoes as a cause of the injury...but when I try to describe it I say "it's the muscle you use when you take off your shoes."

So I will reform my shoe ways and see how that goes.

Thanks for the advice!

Mollie

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01/26/10 11:53 AM from Coach

Aaaarghhh!!! I'll bet anything that once you get out of that habit, your hamstring will be fine (and then you'll be pissed that you wasted a couple of months trying to figure out what was wrong). Did they not offer a course in remedial shoe removal at Boston University?!?! I'll bet the football players all took it. :)

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So, dear readers, take a lesson from me. BEWARE OF YOUR SHOE REMOVAL TECHNIQUE. And that is all I have to say about that.