Since November, I’ve had intermittent discomfort in my lower back. I first noticed it on the morning of the Philadelphia Marathon, and it was much worse the next day. It’s been gradually improving, but I have occasional flare-ups. The worst was after a day in late December when I was shoveling some dense snow off our driveway. I had another flare-up yesterday, after running the Surf City Marathon on Sunday.
The discomfort is
always in the same places. It’s either
just to the right of my spine, or near my right hip. It felt similar to symptoms I had last May
when I had a disc protrusion. I assumed
I had a similar injury this time.
It’s tough to get
a doctor appointment around the holidays, so I decided to see if it would heal
on its own. If not, I could mention it
to my doctor when I went in for my annual physical. That was today.
My doctor diagnosed
a strain of the lumbar paraspinous muscle, which goes down the right side of my
back. He didn’t find anything wrong with
my spine. That’s really good news. My worst fear was a herniated disc. That’s an injury that could’ve forced me to
stop running for months. This is an
injury that should heal with medication, heat, and some exercises. I’ll need to take it easy for a couple days,
but I should be able to resume training later this week.
In other news, I
learned this morning that the George Washington’s Birthday Marathon was
cancelled. That race was scheduled to
take place on February 20, which is much too soon for me to be racing
again. I was actually relieved when I
read about the cancellation, especially after learning that the organizers are
refunding everyone’s entry fees. That’ll
give me extra recovery time before my next race.
Sometimes bad news
is good news.
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