Going With The Flow

AM - Biked alongside Jake for an hour. 

PM - Rollerblading for an hour. 

AM - 1.5 miles around the block. Lots of hip pain, but I was so discouraged that I ran anyways. It's been 4 weeks and no improvement! I'm convinced that I got a placebo instead of steroids because I haven't gotten any relief at all from the hip pain. MRI time. Gotta figure out what's wrong!!!

MRI Appointment tomorrow evening. I pushed for an MRI of both the pelvis and the spine, but my doctor is convinced it's a spine issue so no pelvis for now. This concerns me for several reasons - 1) sometimes MRI of the spine shows something that is not the cause of the pain 2) all the pain is in the right hip and that area is not even being imaged 3) it could be multiple things and we miss it. I voiced these concerns (through a nurse of course b/c the doctor couldn't give me two minutes on the phone). But hopefully he's right and the spine MRI is all I need.

AM - 1 mile, caught up with Jake on his cooldown. 

PM - 1.5 miles around the block before the MRI. I wanted to make sure that the MRI showed how I look after a run. Not sure if that actually makes any sense, but it made me feel better.  

AM - 20 minutes on the recumbent bike, felt okay-ish. Yoga for 15 minutes.

PM - Weight training 30 minutes. 

Got back the spine MRI results....basically, nothing. If we had done an MRI on my hip like I asked (because the pain is in my hip) maybe I would already have a diagnosis. That plus the fact that I had to go get the results from the diagnostic center myself because my doctor is too busy to call and tell me the results mean that 1) he is going to get an earful from me 2) I'm getting a new doctor and 3) I am not fun to be around right now.

Update: Matt Poulsen (part of Scott's 5am crew) is an orthopedic surgeon and quite the runner. After a desperate plea for help, he was more than happy to see me tomorrow. He is awesome!!! I should've gone to him in the first place :)

AM - 15 minutes worth of planks, probably the most boring workout ever. Luckily I had this article about Kip Litton (marathon fraud?) to keep me entertained. 

Went to see Matt this morning. I have already decided that he's an excellent doctor. First of all, he was so thorough and I could just tell that he is going to do everything he can to help me figure out what the problem is. Second of all, he understands sports injuries, was an excellent runner for BYU, and likes to talk about running :) So we took a few x-rays that were clean - no arthritis, a tiny little bump on the femoral head but likely not FAI. He immediately got me in for a hip MRI with contrast.

Results - MRI came out clean. No stress fractures, no bursitis, no major muscle/tendon damage, a little condral labral separation but unlikely that would be the source of pain...so good news there! But still.....why am I in pain?! A sports hernia was thrown out there as a possibility, leg length discrepency, or maybe my body just completely rejected the idea of me thinking about running a marathon this fall! :) I think we'll figure it out in the next few weeks. But what this does mean is that I don't have to worry about causing additional damage to a serious injury and can try to do weight bearing activities, running, etc. Maybe now that I approach it differently and incorporate some specific exercises Matt recommended, this mysterious problem will go away. Part of me feels like a total wimp that I have this pain that doesn't show up as anything in the imaging at all. I know it was good to rule things out, but do I just have a really low pain tolerance or something? Oh well, if that's the case, at least I'll know when something really bad has happened. 

AM - Started off the day bad but ended up being good :)

Woke up at 5am this morning with lots of hip pain. I got myself all worked up about not knowing what's wrong so I couldn't go back to sleep. 

Headed up north to watch the Layton 10k/5k. Since I'm clear to run, I just decided to go for it today...and actually succeeded! Ran Jake's warm-up with him then a cooldown with the JAJA plus Andrew. The pain actually got better after two miles and I felt okay. We'll see what kind of effect it really has later today.

Took some pics -

And this one is BY FAR my favorite! Check out their new plates!