This week was 37 miles of running, 30 minutes on the arc-trainer/stairclimber, and 9 "miles" of pool-running -- training log is here.
My overall mileage (land+pool) was a lot lower than I would have liked - in large part because I'm running more and it's very hard to fit in both pool-running and running if I'm not running right by the pool. This was balanced out by a careful return to faster running and increasing the mileage of my runs, so I was generally happy with the week.
I started testing things on Monday by trying my standard warm-up fartlek (3:00, 4x0:30, and 4x0:10). Normally I target half-marathon effort, 5k effort, and mile effort for those segments, but this time I settled for "anything faster than easy pace" - I just wanted to test stuff out. That felt clumsy but safe, so I did a careful hill workout on Friday.
One frustrating thing about Parkinsons is that I forget physical skills very easily, and running fast is a different skill from running slow. Because I've continued to run easy over the past few weeks, I remember how to run easy. But I can tell that I've forgotten how to run fast. Hills force one to run with good form, and so I'm doing hills for my intervals to relearn fast running mechanics.
I finished off the week with my longest run in a while - 10 miles. My hip held up very well, so I think I've turned a corner on this. Now it's a matter of carefully increasing the load each week.
As for the hip injury - I think it might be helpful to outline exactly what it was (and what it wasn't), in case it's ever helpful to someone else.
Essentially, I had an irritated/spasming obturator muscle. Most people have never heard of this muscle, but you do use it in running. It's two of the "deep 6" rotator muscles - the most famous of those muscles is the piriformis. (I say two because there's an obturator internus and an obturator externus - they get treated as one muscle for my purposes).
The obturator is lower on the hip than the piriformis - it wraps around your sit bone (ischial tuberosity) and attaches to the femur. It stabilizes the femur in the hip socket. It is also one of the pelvic floor muscles, which is why I was referred to a pelvic floor specialist to get it calmed down.
Obturator issues can be really confusing and hard to diagnose. For one thing, both the obturator nerve and the sciatic nerve are adjacent to this muscle, so when it spasms it can irritate those nerves and refer pain all over the hip.
And...because the obturator wraps around the sit bone (where the hamstring attaches) a sore obturator is very easy to confuse with high hamstring tendonitis. Both cause pain when you flex your hip and stretch your hamstring. There are two ways to tell the two apart.
The first way is that the pain of a sore obturator feels horizontal and is most painful on each side of the sit bone. In contrast, high hamstring pain feels more vertical and is centered on and just below the sit bone.
The second way is pretty easy: do a weighted hamstring curl or reverse plank or something else that contracts the hamstring without flexing at the hip. If you are completely pain-free while contracting your hamstring against heavy resistance, then your problem is very likely not your hamstring, but another muscle in that sit bone area. And the obturator is a solid candidate in that case.
At this point, my obturator muscle isn't damaged. It was just spasming for a while and had several trigger points as a result. Now that those trigger points have been addressed and it's no longer spasming, there's no real problem with the muscle. However, my body is still sensitized to that area and hyper-reactive. The best solution to that is exactly what I am doing - carefully re-introducing stress to the area so that it resets.
Monday: 5 miles mostly very easy (9:20) on the track with a short and careful fartlek and 30 minutes on the arc-trainer with a workout of 5x4 minutes hard with 75 seconds recovery. Followed with leg strengthwork. Foam rolling in evening.
Tuesday: 8 "miles" pool-running and streaming yoga. Foam rolling in evening.
Wednesday: 7 miles very easy (9:50) and upper body weights/core. Foam rolling in evening.
Thursday: 4 miles very easy (9:55) and 20 minutes of hiking, followed by upperbody weights/core. Foam rolling in the evening.
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Friday: 7 miles with 6 careful Iwo Jima hills (2:30 at a moderate effort up a 2% slope with about 3 minutes jogging recovery. Followed with leg strengthwork. Foam rolling at night.
Saturday: 4 miles very easy (9:50) on track and streaming pilates. (also got my first shingles vaccination). Foam rolling in evening.
Sunday: 10 miles very easy (10:02), 1 "mile" pool-running, and injury prevention work. Foam rolling in evening.
