Hip Trouble Saturday

First, today's run:

The goal was to “recover” from Saturday’s Trail Mix and also to run easily, at the 9:30 pace I’d like to run in the upcoming marathon. That would get me to the finish in 4:09, with a comfortable 6-minute margin ahead of the 4:15 Boston-qualifying time. I think 4:09 - 4:15 may be a reasonable goal for my current level of fitness, even though I have no plan to run Boston again.

I succeeded with the run - no pains at all, and muscles feel relaxed with very little residual soreness from Saturday. I did not succeed quite as well with the pace - I ran a 4:00 marathon pace instead of 4:15. But with water stops and a few uphill walk breaks, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad pace in a marathon. Splits: 9:13, 13:34 (1.5 mi), total 22:47, pace 9:07. Breathing was mostly five footfalls per full breath, some four, never three, which suggests that it was a sustainable pace. Hope so.

This is “dex day,” because I took the weekly dexamethasone (steroid) cancer treatment last night. I still don’t know if dex helps or hurts endurance running, but I do know I’m happy to be taking it on Sunday night now instead of Friday, so that the weekend races can be dex-free. The dex effect is very noticeable on Monday (I’m hyper and temporarily diabetic!), less noticeable on Tuesday with poor sleep Tuesday night, then pretty normal the rest of the week. Pity those poor folks who used to take dex four days out of every eight; the doctors stopped prescribing that about a year ago when they figured out that the treatment killed almost as many people as the cancer did and that this treatment works almost as well at combating the cancer.

Hip Trouble:

Last Saturday, long after the pain-free Trail Mix race was over, I sat for a while in an uncomfortable position at a party. Standing up, I felt the sharp, stabbing pain in my right hip that I have experienced exactly three other times since early March. It is a real show-stopper - like an ice pick just at or below the joint. In the past I have thought that it was a bursa acting up, but now I’m not so sure - it seems farther inside. And it’s very tricky - some of the time during an incident I can walk normally, but then for no apparent reason the ice pick will stab and I’ll be stopped in my tracks. Sometimes I can even run a short bit, but then the same thing will happen, only worse. It will be slightly sensitive the next day and entirely gone in two, as it was today, so it’s obviously not a muscle or tendon injury. But in the meantime it prevents running and makes walking slow and difficult. In a marathon it might result in a DNF, depending on where in the marathon it happened. So far only one of the four instances occurred while running, and it did not happen during the 15-mile trail race, so I’m hopeful of finishing but concerned.

What’s common among the four instances? Three things come to mind: (1) In all cases, I was wearing running shoes with the custom orthotics in them; (2) In all cases except the run, I was wearing fairly tight jeans; and (3) In all cases but the run, the problem occurred when I was seated for at least 15 minutes and then got up and made an immediate turn to the left. So for now, until this is figured out, I will not wear old running shoes for casual use, I will not use the orthotics at all (they’re to prevent plantar fasciitis, a lesser problem), I will not wear those jeans, and I will try to remember to be very careful whenever I get out of a chair. As an extra measure: I will not sit with a wallet in my right hip pocket, especially when I drive a car with bucket seats.

And how can I take this problem to my wonderful internist, who can surely figure it out? I have to wait until the problem occurs and THEN try for a same-day appointment, because the pain will be gone by the next day. It may be a while before I can pull that off.

Longer run tomorrow, perhaps on the lovely Gateway Trail.



Yesterday's breakfast: Irish oatmeal with organic flame raisins and cranberries, blueberries, banana, Dove dark chocolate, organic walnuts, Don's fruit/berry/nut mix, fresh mango, nonfat organic milk, organic pomegranate juice.


Yesterday's lunch: Organic gluten-free brown rice pasta, organic carrots and beans, organic sweet potato with organic flame raisins, homemade pasta sauce, shredded asiago and parmesan cheeses.


Tonight's dinner: Organic chicken leg, homemade cheesy corn crackers (yum), organic sweet potato with onion, organic pomegranate juice.