Friday 29 May 2009

Birthday osteopathy #2: A Present.

Things are looking up.

The osteopath, Laura, has given me an early birthday present, as you may have guessed from the title of this post. It wasn't a trapped nerve, eureka moment, but I really didn't think it would be. She explained to me what she reckoned was wrong, and it all fell into place.

The torn muscle is not all of the problem, and in fact was probably caused by a previous problem. I've always had problems with my back and neck, leading to bad posture, favouring one side of my torso, being constantly out of whack. Laura thinks this is what is lying behind the other stuff, and it makes perfect sense.

I'll have to go further later, as I'm about to take the dog out for a walk. Because I feel like moving again.

:o)

Birthday osteopathy.

I'm going to see Laura, the osteopath, in an hour or so. She's not just the osteopath, of course, she's a friend too.

I've held off from this form of treatment because I was kind of tacitly advised against it - given the impression that it might not be a very good idea as no-one yet knows what exactly is wrong. But then no-one, at least from the orthodox side of medicine IE the NHS, has gone to very much trouble to figure it out. This is understandable, my condition being fairly mundane and unlikely to kill me, and hard to pinpoint.

So we shall see what she comes up with. I'm hoping that, after a couple of minutes of fiddling, she will exclaim "Well, bugger me! It's one of those.." and frees something up just like that and the pain abruptly disappears, never to return. If this happens I shall be back down the gym/out on the road by Monday, believe me. Yes, it's unlikely, but imagine..

And then I'll stop moaning.

What's more likely is that, hopefully, she'll recognise the problem and she'll know what I've got to do to either resolve it or at least minimise its effects. For all I know it could be a trapped nerve - which to my uneducated mind might explain the sciatica - and easily fixed, but that's wishful thinking. A torn muscle would ring bells, and maybe be almost as easily seen to. What else it could be I really don't have much of a clue, along with the specialists and others I've seen so far.

If she does sort it out I might have to give her a hug, though only after I've put my clothes back on, naturally. I'm getting very down on diazepam, ibuprofen and codeine. (By 'down on' I mean 'really bloody pissed off with'). 

It's worth a try, anyway. Even if she just makes it better for the weekend, it'll be worth it.

The weekend, yes.. Seems it shall be spent amost exclusively in the Nash, not in Stockholm City Hospital. It's alittle annoying that things didn't go quite as I'd hoped and I'm not currently strolling around Stockholm, checking out the route and feeling fit as a fiddle etc. I suppose the Nash is the next best thing.

I've been looking at marathons to do, again, and I'm kind of intrigued with the Amsterdam one, though October may still be too early. I'll have to have a chat with Stuart about it - if he reckons it can be done then that's the very fellow for me. If not I may have to wait for next year's slew of races. Most of them seem to be in April, probably just to piss off the runners by making them train through winter. There's more likely a far better reason for it, actually, but I'm now running a bit late for Laura, which could be a weird song title, so I'll have to google it later.

A shower, a drive over to Mayfield trying to avoid changing gear as much as possible, then maybe some kind of result.

Fingers crossed.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

I knew it was a bad idea.

Talk about being lax..

Some explaining might be necessary, or it would be if anyone's reading this who doesn't already know what's being going on. So here's an email I'm about send out to anybody I have addresses for.

Hello everyone,

As many of you know I've had to postpone my marathon run. It was due to happen May 30th in Stockholm, a couple of days from now. It was all booked from around the start of October last year and, at that point, all was looking good, if a bit daunting.

Pretty much immediately I started getting chest pains, just niggling at first and not enough to detract from the training. Apparently I'd torn a muscle, so I concentrated for a while on exercises that didn't affect that area and hoped it would heal quick. Unfortunately this didn't work, and the pain increased all over my chest and back. Consequently training became impossible - I didn't think running used hardly any muscles above the waist, naively(!) - or at best counter-productive. I've had all sorts of physiotherapy, blood tests and x-rays and am now waiting for an appointment with the Rheumatology Dpt of my local hospital, as well as an MRI scan, to try and determine where the problem lies.

As soon as I can I will resume training. This time it will be along with a friend who is Head of PE at a school near here and who has done the New York Marathon. He has also pretty much decided to do another marathon himself, which will be perfect as I'll have to work at it so as not to hold him back - as you can imagine he's quite a bit fitter than me.. Once we start we'll decide which marathon to go for (I had been considering Berlin, which is at the end of September, but it looks like that's a bit too soon), and I'll let everyone know asap.

So - thank you to everyone who has sponsored me so far, I'm sorry it hasn't happened yet, but it definitely will. Whatever the problem is it'll get sorted out and then I'll probably have to apologise again for sending you all an email asking for a sponsorship you've already given! 

Everyone else, well, I'll be getting on to you for sponsorship soon, hopefully!

I'm writing a blog about all this, which I haven't updated for a while but shall get back into, here: http://marathonion.blogspot.com/

Not all of it's about the training, and probably quite a bit of it will bore your heads off, but there it is, anyway. Any news etc will be on there.

It doesn't finish as abruptly as that, of course, I just felt that was enough italics.

So I'm not doing the Stockholm Marathon. I'm not at all happy about it, and I feel like a failure in some ways because I really had - and still have - my heart set on it, and I was quite evangelical about it for a while, but the only way i could have done it was to walk it which, as I've said, would have been pointless. 

I'm just hoping this injury, or whatever it is, gets sorted out as soon as possible and I can get on with the training and planning the contingencies. The fact that Stuart should be doing it with me, with his prior knowledge and, I hope, boundless patience will be a great help. I really hope it comes off.

I'm seeing an osteopath on Friday. Maybe I'll know more then. And maybe it'll be good news. Actually, it will be good news, as long as it's some news.

Feels like Phase 2. 

:o)