Monday 5 August 2013

Nothing to worry about

I'm now up to five repetitions of 5 minutes jog/1 minute walk.  That's 25 minutes of almost-running!  Even more exciting is that I'm pretty much doing this with no pain during and no pain after.  I say 'pretty much' because, following last Wednesday's flight home from Shetland, my hip seized up again. 

Not my legs (or my taste in shirts)
I was absolutely fine before I got on the plane.  Because of incapacitating fog over the previous two days, the flight was completely full due to the need to accommodate people whose flights had been delayed or cancelled.  I was the last person to be seated because of a computer glitch that had double-booked my seat, which meant that I needed to wait until everyone else had been seated before the flight attendant could attend to me and then boot the interloper out of my seat; by the time that I was seated, the overhead compartments were heaving with other people's things so there was no choice but to put my rucksack under the seat in front of me, leaving NO ROOM AT ALL for me to stretch my legs out.  Two hours of sitting twisted up like a motionless pretzel in those teeny tiny Flybe seats saw me limping off the plane back in Inverness with a pain in my hip and a pain in my calf.

My hip & calf (the site of my former injury, as opposed to DVT) continued to twinge for the next four days.  Not enough to keep me from my jog/walks but enough to have me reaching for the ibuprophen afterwards and enough to make me worry that I was experiencing a relapse.  Fortunately, I had an appointment with Adam today who reported - after 60 minutes of making me cry - that all that he could feel were tight muscles rather than any re-injuries.  I have his blessing to try 10 minutes x 2 of continuous running later this week as well as strict instructions to get back to doing the strengthening & stretching exercises that I've let lapse because I was feeling better.

It's a sure sign of progress when I start reverting to bad habits.