A Balance, Redefined

Well today was just adding to the "fun". Those of you who have been following (thanks JD for the continued push), now know that I've seen an Orthopod, a PT, and now an Orthotics specialist. The good news is none of them have found anything overtly wrong. The bad news is that none of them have found anything overtly wrong. I'm confused about this pain. I think it is an overuse issue. Mainly too much training without proper rest and stress relief. I think as my life gets more hectic combined with elite level training something has to give... Unfortunately that typically turns out to be my knee. When I look back over my injury record it almost always happens as my mileage crests 80 mpw, my work week crests 70 hpw, and something big is going on in life, marriage, birth, graduation, move, etc. I speak of a balance but have yet to find it. I know Jon had a great thread awhile back about, impossible to run 100 mpw, or something to that effect. I think for me I need to focus on stress relief, keeping up with the stretching, and proper sleep. If I cannot do those three things I'm too high in one of the three things that I do with my life (family, work, and running). I'll continue to struggle with this and hopefully find the answer. I would like to run competitively for at least 5 more years if not 15 more years... We shall see. 

On to today. I got up and into lab early as I had some experiments to do before heading to see Bill about my orthotics. Got there on time and he had a look at me. He came to the same conclusion as the others as well as the PT I saw in St. Louis. That is that I have no flexibility, my right leg is about 1/8-1/4 inch shorter than my left, and my leg has a slight twist outward. He said he would not feel comfortable changing my orthotic at this time since I've run in it for so long now. He stressed the importance of the stretches that Robin told me about last week. So I will continue with the slow recovery and just keep in my mind that when I do get back to 80+ mpw that I will need to keep up with the stretching and maybe get some monthly sports massage... 

Now to add insult to injury I finally caught one of the colds my household has been incubating over the last month. For the last four weeks my wife and daughter have been alternating colds. Today by noon my throat was sore and by 4pm my head was so stuffed I wasn't thinking straight. I misread the clock and thought it was 5:30 not 4:30 and was rushing around lab like an idiot because my wife had something at church and I had to be home on time... The good news is when I ended up getting home almost an hour early we were able to head over to the Union and vote early. The rest of the night I laid on the couch feeling miserable. I took some Nyquil and crashed but woke up at 3am, was finally able to get to sleep and then when my alarm went off I gave myself another 1.5 hrs of sleep to 6:30. Took a Dayquil and now my nose is at least clear but my throat is still pretty sore… Now I’m in lab trying to get things organized and focus on how I’m going to finish off this year. This last part is actually Thurs morning...