On to something?

This is not a very exciting post for anybody but me but hopefully my excitement will be enough to interest you. Below is, what I hypothesize, a solution to my reoccurring knee pain that seems to show it's ugly head as my miles start reaching the 60+/week.

1/2" heel lift for my shoes to test for a couple weeks.

After two months of 2x per week acupuncture, daily yoga, weekly massage and hours of 'balancing' weight room workouts my knee was still really bothering me. So much that I cut out running the last two weeks and focused on self massage, stretching and everything else I could think of. Finally, a running buddy of mine said "just go see my chiropractor. If he doesn't think he can help you out he'll be the first to tell you". After telling the doc everything I've been doing he said, let's just take a quick xray to see if you have a leg imbalance. At this point, I needed some hard data and an xray sounded good to me. A few minutes later I had my answer, my tibia on my right leg is 1.3 cm shorter than the tibia on my left leg. This doesn't sound like much, and probably wouldn't bother the average runner, however 5+ hours of essentially limping is probably going to cause some issues.

I am happy because we have a very good lead to my knee issue. I will give the temporary lift two weeks to see how it feels and, if things are better, will then have to put a permanent lift on all the soles of my running  and work shoes. A small price to pay to be healthy, happy and running again. In addition, even though I have a permanent problem we have found a potential solution. Something I have been struggling to do ever since I started running marathons and beyond. I plan on taking the next couple weeks to make sure my base is still strong then we'll test out the lift....hopefully at the Xterra half. Stay tuned.

Happy running!