Week Two of Rehab: Strengthening

Today I saw a different physical therapist.  For the past week, I’ve been working on healing and improving my flexibility.  I’m about 50% recovered, but I need to start working on strength.  After several exercises to test my strength and flexibility, my therapist gave me a few exercises to do at home.

In addition to rebuilding strength in the inured muscles, I’m also going to be strengthening my hips.  That should not only help with recover from this injury, but also help me with my chronic hamstring issues.

She also showed me several dynamic stretching exercises that I can do as a warm-up before running.  I tried some of them today.  After the exercises I did earlier, some of the weaker muscles in my right leg were getting tired, and I had trouble with my balance.  After that the therapist demonstrated the remaining warm-up exercises.

I went home with a list of warm-up exercises, and a few diagrams to remind me how to do my strengthening exercises.  My therapist also gave me a Theraband to use for a couple of the exercises.

Everyone I’ve seen about this injury knows my goal is to run the Comrades Marathon a week from Sunday.  We’re all on the same page as far as my recover schedule.  Yesterday, I ran 5.25 miles with no discomfort.  For the next week, I’ll be running every other day.  On the days I run, I’ll do the dynamic warm-up exercises.  On the days I don’t run, I’ll do my new strengthening exercises.

I’ll run seven miles tomorrow.  If that feels OK, I’ll probably run the same distance on Friday.  I’m registered for the Med City Marathon on Sunday.  If all goes well, I plan to run it, but I’ll go at an easy pace.  If I have any discomfort, I’ll stop immediately.  I have the green light to do the whole race, but only if I don’t experience any discomfort.