Runner Down

Last January, I felt an acute pain in my groin while running an interval sprint session hard. It was after doing a lot of core work and I was fatigued. It caused me to stop running from February to May. During that time, I saw my family physician because I was concerned that I might need a surgery to repair a hernia. But the doctor said it probably wasn't a hernia, rather a muscle strain.

By June the pain was gone so I went back to running. In the months following, the groin pain would come back, off and on, especially when I ran hard interval sessions. Last week after nine months of dealing with this injury I saw a physical therapist specializing in endurance athletes. His name is Mick Larrabee of Optimal Performance.

He listened to me talk, then had me bend my legs in all sorts of funny angels and make measurements. He then said he was pretty sure it wasn't sportsmen's hernia or Gilmore's groin. He said there were multiple problems. He thinks I have a torn muscle in my groin that wont heal because my right SI joint is rotated back and causing strain on the muscle. Curiously a lot of friends have also seen Mick and successfully fixed running pains related to misalignment of the SI joints.

He wasn't sure if the torn muscle caused the SI joint to be out of alignment or vice versa, but he said however it happened, the muscle wouldn't heal as long as the rotated SI joint was straining it. So he realigned my SI joints by resisting my left leg while I pulled up, then resisting on my right leg while I pushed down. He said this torqued the joint back to proper position, he made measurements again and said it was better. He said the torn muscle should heal now that there isn't constant strain on it. But he told me to stop running and gave me easy core exercises to do.

Ugh. Stop running. Words that runners don't want to hear. But I'm glad for the diagnosis (rather than blindly "dealing with it") and I'm glad Mick gave me a plan to make it better. So we'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed.