Day 4

Well today is day 4 since my back flared up and it is still sore. At times it feels a little better, other times a little worse, but on the whole largely unchanged. It has me a little concerned, since there are a lot of similarities between what I am feeling now and what I was feeling when I last had major issues. Trying not to count chickens before they hatch etc, but it would nice to get a bit of improvement to provide some reassurance.

To elaborate a bit. It isn't so much the sore back that concerns me. What concerns me is more that my back isn't very sore, but other parts are. At the moment I have quite a lot of soreness in my upper glute. Why this concerns me is that it referred pain from my back, which may mean nerve impingement, which may mean a disc is bulging. I would be a lot less worried if I hadn't had exactly this sort of thing before. Last time around my back felt fine, but I had really sore calves, they felt like I had just done 20km of running on soft sand. But I hadn't. Then the soreness didn't go away. I didn't know it at the time, but my L4 and L5 discs had herniated, resulting in reasonably decent nerve impingement (I have the MRI to prove it). As I mentioned yesterday, last time around the physio gave me the okay to keep training until one morning I lost function in my right calf. At that point I was told to stop training right that second.

This time around the pain in my glute is harder to run through anyway. It sort of feels like I would struggle to run now at the moment. However, the similarities, the referred pain, the lack of improvement etc all have me a little concerned. Nothing much to do but train as I can and keep stretching until I get back to the physio on Wednesday and get some more guidance. At least this time around I already know most of the stretches etc.

I am trying not to get to far ahead of myself here, in terms of planning my rehab before I have even had anything diagnosed. After all this may be nothing more than a strain that sorts itself out in a few more days. I am also trying not to play too many rounds of 'I shoulda', ie I shoulda stretched a bit more while travelling, I shoulda said no to the travel in the first place etc. I am trying to not do those things, but I have to say I don't think I am succeeding particularly well. 

So for today training was a water run. I had forgotten just how slow that is, plus a little boring. Still there are worse places to do it than Bicton Baths. Watching all the families enjoying the river on a hot Perth summer day kept me enterained for a while.

My plan for tomorrow morning is to do exactly what I did this morning, that is, get up as if I am going for a run, have a stretch and see how my back is feeling. If it is feeling good, then I will be going running. If not, then I won't be. I will see in the morning.