I've got a question for you armchair running docs--and the actual running docs among you. It has me mystified.
I've been training great over the past 4-5 months. I'd ramped up to a comfortable 45 mpw, and had recently run a couple of decent 5Ks. (I'm 58.). I've been seeing a chiro and an LMT regularly. My alignment has been great. I've been running light, free, with full power.
10 days ago I took a fast and comfortable 5 miler run on a Tuesday morning. Everything was great. I did a few stretches afterwards, then came home. Later that morning I went into my closet and reached up to yank a stack of about 10 t-shirts out of a big crack in a clear storage tub. I basically had full extension--I might even have been on raised toes--and I was slightly twisted. I yanked and yanked and finally got them out.
Later that day I noticed some soreness in the right portion of my lower back. I had a back back blowout in March, so I was worried.
Long story short: trouble emerged. I was very sore back there--but it wasn't the usual back blowout, because there was NO pain if I simply bent forward. And the pain went away if I sat in a chair or sofa. The pain immediately manifested, though, if I tried to lift my right hip by lifting my straight left leg up INTO my hip--an old assessment test my chiro had showed me. That kind of hip-raise maneuver immediately nailed a familiar muscle deep in my lower back. So something in my right lower back was tweaked. I was fine when I sat down. But standing--just standing, or walking around--I'd get a pretty bad ache on the right side. I couldn't run a step, either.
I saw my chiro and then, this past Saturday, went to a local Urgent Care and got an x-ray, which showed nothing. The LNP, who had helped me back in March, gave me a four-day course of Prednisone, which had done the trick back in March. That was Saturday through this past Tuesday, two days ago. I didn't run for the entire week, Tuesday through Tuesday.
By Tuesday, there was an interesting development. My back had stopped hurting--the steroids had done what they do--but that ache on the right side had suddenly migrated to my right hip. I could jog in place with no pain. Nothing was broken. It didn't feel as though anything major was torn. But there was a noticeable ache when I just stood still, and a noticeable ache when I extended my right leg back with a bit of an outward twist to the heel. Nothing at all on the inner portion of my right thigh, though. No adductor strain, no hamstring strain.
I saw my chiro again. He has experience as an LMT, so he put me on my face and did a bunch of assessment manipulations. He said, "Nothing's torn, but all those muscles that fan out from your hip socket are pretty angry."
But here's another symptom that has shown up in the past few days: when I walk across a smooth floor, in street shoes or barefoot, my right foot hits noticeably harder than my left foot. It's uncanny. I've never had this. It's "slap, slap, slap." I sound almost gimpy.
I went for a slow 2 mile jog yesterday after chiro, just to see how I was, and it was weird. The heavy right foot thing was real. My alignment, my mechanics: just off. No particular pain in my right hip, though. But a f--ked up stride.
Same thing this morning. Slightly better. But the right foot is off.
Have you ever tried to walk barefoot, on your heels, across a smooth wood floor? In order to do that, you need to contract your anterior tibialis muscle to hold the front of your foot slightly up.
I tried that a few minutes ago and bingo! My left foot could do that. My right foot basically couldn't. I've lost some basic strength or contracting ability in my right anterior tibialis. That's why it's hitting heavy when I walk. Normally, without even realizing it, our anterior tibialis contacts when we extend our foot to take a step--or so I've decided after having this experience. When that capacity is diminished, the front of our foot just hits, splat.
So here's my question for you sportsmedicine docs and others: What is going on here? What sort of damage did I do to the muslces and/or ligaments/tendons connected with my hip when I reached up to yank stuff in my closet? And, importantly, in what way could strained musculature/connective stuff in the hip affect my anterior tibialis in that way?
This all feels like a bad dream. The degree of structural problem created by a relatively minor indoor mishap astonishes me. I'm seeing my LMT tomorrow, thankfully, but I think I might also jump up to my ART guy in Memphis.....