Toronto Running Chiro

Well I do not think I have ever had feelings of longing for a new year until this year.  This has been a tough one to say the least on many different levels.  But along with the struggles and heartache there were of course some positive achievements as well.  As I have always suggested I think it is important to spend some time as the year comes to an end in order to reflect on the year that has past.  The positive, the negative and ways in which you can improve to be better in the following year.  Here is a snippet of my reflections.

Running:  well it was a year of ups/downs to say the least.  Considering I have been sidelined for 4 months there were still some positives that came out of it.  I ran a PB in the marathon, 10k and 5k.  Before the worse injury I have ever experienced.  I have spent a lot of time reflecting on why the injury happened and what I should do differently.  But I have not spent a lot of time allowing myself to celebrate the fact that I still ran 3 PBs in the first 2/3 of the year. So today I will spend time celebrating that instead of dwelling on the lack of running as of lately. 

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This is the longest time I have spent away from running and I feel so fortunate that even though I am not running I can still be a part of running through my work.

My hope is that I can come back to running 100% healthy and with a better head on my shoulders.  I want to put no pressure on myself as I do not know where I will be at when I am able to start running again.  If you want to read more about the injury see below.

BUTTTT there was another positive that came out of this as well, I learned how to swim!!  I did a under water swim analysis which was great to learn how to be more effective in the many hours I spent in the pool.  I think this will be helpful for my training going forward as I likely will not be able to run my mileage as high as I would like.  I also look forward to seeing the impact swimming has had on my fitness.

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I also did a super fun training camp in Arizona with a badass gang of ladies!!  This made my heart so happy and I hope to do this again in the future. 

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Career:  I continue to learn and grow as a chiropractic and absolutely love working with my colleagues and the runners of Toronto and beyond. 

New endeavors: Thanks to Megan Brown for pushing me outside of my comfort zone in order to go for it with personal coaching.  I have started a new group and taken on more athletes than ever before and I am beyond excited for it.  I even changed my schedule to give myself a day during the week to dedicate to coaching.  So we will see what happens with that but needless to say I am beyond excited!

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Family: This was by far the most difficult part of my year.  Losing my dad is still a shock to me and I know I have not fully allowed myself to process this.  I think of my dad every day and still cannot believe he is gone.
On top of that I also lost a cousin to mental health.
Needless to say this year was beyond difficult for myself and my family. But those that we have lost will forever be in our hearts.

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So to 2018 that was one of the most difficult years of my life thank you for making me stronger but I am happy to move past this. Have a wonderful night celebrating the year that has past and be sure to spend some time reflecting on the good, the bad and the areas of improvement.

The injury:

Well it started out as what we thought was just sacroiliac joint dysfunction… no big deal we though give it a few days to calm down and some treatment and we will be good to go.  But as the pain persisted and I had trouble weight bearing on it, it became obvious that I was not going to be making it to the start line.  I was later diagnosed with a sacral stress fracture.  So 6 weeks of no running or anything that put load through the SI joint.  Which basically meant the pool for me—something totally new to me.  But as the time went on it became obvious that my hamstring was an issue as well.  This hamstring has bothered on/off for the last 3 years.  And quite frankly was very painful but I was so used to the pain I did not think twice about.  It got to the point this past summer where I would start my easy runs at 6:00/km pace due to not being able to lift my leg.  So we decided since I had already taken so much time off we may as well get everything healthy and at this point there was no pending starting line to rush back to.  So I got imaging on it which found a large tear in my hamstring and adductor.  I then went to Galea clinic where they did an ultrasound and did not find a tear so sent me for an MRI.  The MRI also did not find a tear but did find boney edema (*and this is after being off for 12 weeks).  This means there was likely a stress reaction at the attachment of my hamstring to my pelvis.  We decided to do a course of rehab/treatment to see if there was any improvement.  I was doing a loading routine 4x a day.  But it was still quite aggravated so last week I did PRP and my fingers are crossed it helps.  I have to take 4 more days off and then I can begin to start some treatment and loading the hamstring.  I am allowed to try to run Jan 10— and I am literally day dreaming about the day.  Training aside… I CANNOT WAIT TO RUN!!!  So in a nutshell that is what happened in regards to the injury.  This damn hamstring has been difficult to say the least in regards to healing.

So what are my take aways in regards to reflecting? Well I need to allow myself to listen to my body and not ignore pain. Which seems obvious but it is amazing what we can run through. I need to not get caught up in ‘the plan’ or the mileage because at the end of the day those things do not matter if you do not make it to the starting line.

I do not regret pushing myself but I do want to evolve to be a smarter and more mature athlete in the future. We will see what happens…

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