Fire the Glutes!

I now must confess a secret. It’s unpleasant. It’s dark. It’s not something I am proud of. Okay, here goes: My entire time with the Gazelles, I’ve been running on an injury. There, said it.

Back in April, about three weeks after my last marathon, I pulled/strained/pissed off my hamstring on my first seven-mile ease-back-into-it jog. Running on it was impossible. I banished myself to the cardio room at the Y for twelve days on an elliptical trainer. A trying time. Breaks like that make some runners seek counseling.

It went away for awhile, but then returned. This time less painful, and it seemed to move up and down the back of my leg. Through all the hard running of the first few weeks of the program, it loomed and irritated, and got worse. I needed Coach’s advice.

I attempt to meet Gilbert in his office to discuss my situation. I get there two minutes early, but he’s not there. I comb the hallway of the building. Nope. I walk over to the Annex where his red Tacoma is parked, only to find the building locked. I sweep the entire RunTex compound. The mystery deepens. I return to his office and he’s sitting there on his phone again.

“Where were you?” I ask, baffled.

“I was here.”

It remains unexplained how Gilbert and I did not run into each other. I consider this proof that Gilbert has the ability to “materialize.”

I begin listing my symptoms. “So the pain kind of roams around, but it’s generally really high up on my hamstring and—“

“Fire the Glutes!”

Pause

“What?”

“Your glutes, man, your glutes!”

Pause.

“I don’t understand what you just said. ”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, your G-L-U-T-E-S.”

Pause.

Another pause. A long one.

“You’re referring to my butt?”

“Of course, your butt. All your power comes from your butt. You need to learn to run with it. The pain isn’t from your hamstring. It’s a nerve. You have adverse neural tension. “

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

“Go see Pieter at Sports Performance International. Tell him I sent you. He will take care of it.”

In Dr. Ted Spears’ office at SPI the next day, I begin my story: “Hi Dr. Spears, I’m Robert, nice to meet you. So, I injured my hamstring and it got better, but then it came back and—“

“You have adverse neural tension.”

“Okay, that’s good enough for me.”

Factoring in the time writing the check toward my deductible, I’m out of the office in about three minutes. And I’ve got my hands on a script for physical therapy with Pieter Kroon, famed healer of lame Gazelles. Surely his hands can rid me of this demon nerve pain.

(Pt. 2 of the story about my butt will continue in a later post.)