Last Thursday, after a pretty decent (not quite) 4 mile run in the morning, I got to work and was filling up my water bottle at the fountain when I suffered from the worst back spasm I've ever encountered in my entire life. Like, crippling, barely able to walk to the ibuprofen fast enough, kind of pain.
This is what I've been struggling with for this entire week. This injury seems to have wormed its way into my head much worse than the other two back injuries and has made itself a nice little nest of depression. And what do I do when I'm depressed? I eat.
I'm depressed because I was on a ROLL. I was gaining great strength and stamina, I was dropping weight and I was feeling good. I was THISCLOSE to being just "overweight". I was breaking my record on a weekly basis for lowest weight ever. All of that to come to a screeching halt because my body couldn't handle the pressure. It choked when it came to the finish line (kinda.)
I stepped on the scale for an "unofficial" weigh in and I've gained back all of the weight I lost since Christmas. I've basically completely destroyed three weeks of hard work. I look in the mirror and I'm disgusted again. I'm still at a lower weight than when I started tour last year (when I felt great about myself and thought I looked fantastic) but now that I've seen the greener pastures, any step backwards is failure.
The good news is that this stops NOW. I went to the chiropractor today and he told me that I was suffering from a strain of the lower back due from both overexertion and a weak core. Both of which make sense.
I told him that I've been having this same thing happen anytime I try and run over 3 miles. He said it was because my body is comfortable with the 3 miles and so are my core muscles When I try and go over that, the fatigued muscles can't hold the weight of my own body and therefore are strained. Also, I need to be stretching them and taking care of them outside of exercising them.
He gave me some stretches as well as a few exercises that I can do both when I'm injured or not. He said that I just need to ease my way back into things and to do some sort of core strengthening on a daily basis. He said within a couple of weeks I should be seeing and feeling results. He did tell me the news that I wanted to hear, and that was that he didn't see any reason why I couldn't eventually get back up to the longer distances. THANK GOD.
So tonight I get back on the treadmill and walk. I'm not going to push it, but I need to get my legs moving. Tomorrow, we shall see. My eating gets back on track ASAP.
I'm hoping that I see a decent drop from my "unofficial" weigh in, but I do know that I will be working hard (but not TOO hard) this next week.
Hopefully next week you will see me reporting an official weight of 235 or less. Keep your fingers crossed that my back stays strong!!
PS - I'M FREEZING!! It's currently a whopping 3 degrees here in Schenectady, NY. This morning when I woke up it was -4. This. Is. Not. Okay.
Stay warm folks!
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