It's been a while...

Due to a variety of things, mainly some sort of sickness that resulted in me being narcoleptic and falling asleep at nearly every moment and a short spat of homelessness, I've been absent from the blog-o-sphere.

In the meantime, I've done lots of things - moved, worked, and swam in the USMS open water national championship in Lake Placid, NY.  Tons of fun, tons of pain.  More on that later.  I've decided to play in an IM soccer league this fall...possibly a poor decision, but we shall see.  I'm trying to work now, but will have to update more later.

I'm hoping that in a week, I'll have my new house together, my life back on track, and a schedule of sorts for incorporating rehab into a daily routine.

Hot, hot, hot

The title says it all.  This heat dome that we're experiencing is wild.  Other than making me want to do little other than sit in air conditioning, it's been drying out my plants like crazy.  That's beside the point.  I did get in and swim this morning, and it felt great!  A little sore in the hip, as expected, but I'm learning how to take it easy enough that it doesn't bother me too much.  I still have to get around to my exercises for tonight, as well as pack for the Tour of Ohio and Michigan that I'm embarking on this weekend.  There will be a lot of driving - which is always tough on the hip! Yikes.  Busy, busy, busy.

A bigger goal than just "get better"

http://crimesagainsthughsmanatees.tumblr.com/post/7369081989

Things I want to do include completing the Pittsburgh marathon, returning to triathlons, playing in (without pain) a complete season of soccer, and, most importantly, stop holding back. 

A new week, a new mood

After a weekend of sleeping (of the 48 hours of Saturday and Sunday, I slept for at least 26 of them), I think I am finally over the death-disease that I've been stuck with for the past month.  I don't want to speak too soon, but today I actually felt like myself.  Not only did I stay awake at work, but I was actually productive - a drastic change in comparison to last week.  Hopefully this means I'm on the road to recovery, in more ways than one!

While doing tonight's exercises, I finally began to feel "in touch" with what I was doing.  Not to go all yoga instructor on you here, but I could feel each individual area I was targeting actually working in each of my exercises (for the most part).  I could feel my psoas engaging and tiring as I did some very basic isometric moves.  While releasing my glutes, I could feel each nudge of the foam roller push out some of the tension.  The only one I have troubles with, sometimes, is working on engaging my glutes prior to my hamstrings while doing lifts in the prone position.  I think I can help this problem by recording the motion and watching it.  Hamstring firing is something that is relative easy to visualize.  Next time, or possibly tomorrow when I'm at my parents house.  This may be a good opportunity to get some posterior mobilization from my dad as well as an evaluation of my current plan.

Although it's almost bedtime, I can't resist watching more of this rain-delayed Pirates game.  I used to love watching Bucco's games...back in the day of Andy van Slyke and Jay Bell.  I remember Fransisco Cordova throwing a no hitter in July of 1997.  And I remember the bad years, although in less detail, because I got busy, the Pirates got worse, and well...I fell off.  I'm back, they're back, and it's all good.  Hats off, though, to the fans (some of my good friends) who stuck it out and stayed loyal through it all.  In the end, though, Let's go Bucs!

Gator swimmers at a game, 2008

Inspiration in the WWC

Brandi Chastain ripping off her jersey to celebrate World Cup victory(Atkins/AP)

Oh, soccer.  I'll never forget Brandi Chastain's infamous sports bra moment post-1999 World Cup championship.  Who could forget such a moment?  Soccer fan or not, male, female, young, old -  no descriptors matter in a moment like that. Joy, happiness, raw emotion.  Watching this year's world cup, I wonder if such a thing will happen again.

As I sit with the third place game about to begin, watching Heather O'Reilly and Megan Rapinoe talking about what's happening tomorrow, I can't help but miss it.  Training videos remind me of drills, weight room reels remind me of strength, and the games remind me of the competitive flame that used to burn.  I'm not ready, at 24, to be a "has been."  I'm not saying I have aspirations of the national team, or even winning any sort of competition.  I have aspirations of competing, and being proud of what I do.  I could probably roll out of bed and race a 5k - it would be painful and ugly, but, without a doubt, I could do it.  I could do a sprint triathlon, I could (and am) doing a cable swim race in a few weeks.  Do I expect to finish my race and be happy with what I did - no, not in the least.  I've lowered, or abolished my expectations.  What kind of athlete has no expectations?

The glory days.

Expectations, in an of themselves, are a funny thing.  "What do you expect?"  As someone who wants to win, do her best, and come out on top, expectations are merely mundane.  It's about what you strive for, wish for, and dream about.  Yes, a dose of realism is always needed.  Never would I, when I was swimming competitively, aim for a time that was out of my reach.  I would, though, know I could go faster than anyone else thought I could.  That is, so much of the training is physical, but when it comes down to race time, the heart and mind kick in and you can do more.  This is what upsets are all about; the story of the underdog that we so embrace as a culture is about taking expectations and throwing them into the dirt and riding through on dreams.

So what does this all mean for me?  Good question.  I want to do it all again, but that's hard.  It's especially hard because I've always been able.  Yes, I had to work hard to be successful in athletics.  Shooting 100 free throws a day, spending hours upon hours getting touches on the soccer ball, doing strengthening exercises on my bedroom floor, reading book after book on mental preparation and technique.  I worked.  I was also 12.  The work paid off, and I was successful in athletics through high school, garnering multiple league and district honors and winning 12 varsity letters.  Sure, I had injuries, but they didn't keep me down: Banged up knees, concussions, sprained backs, sore shoulders, broken ribs, turf toe...the list goes on.  I sat out a half, modified practices, changed my races, and got back into it.  I actually started all 80+ soccer games of my high school career, minus the one I sat out due to an errant red card.  That's a whole different story.

Now, I'm at the bottom.  I've got to get to the top. One foam roll at a time. The top now isn't the top of the league standings or the top of the podium, rather, it's the top of the rankings in my own mind.  It's the top of myself.

An hour a day isn't much time at all...

When I started this (a whole four days ago), I thought I had an hour a day I could put toward PT and getting better.  Little did I realize that I actually don't have that time.  My days generally involve me leaving my house around 7-7:15 in the morning, stopping in at work quickly, heading to the pool to coach, working until 6 PM or later, doing some sort of social activity or errands, get home, make dinner, clean up.  After all that, it's usually close to 10 PM.  With whatever death-disease I've been suffering from lately, that means bedtime.  Last night I fell asleep on the floor between exercise reps. Geesh.

I'll have an hour tonight and through the weekend. Hopefully that will put me back on track!!

Who does PT when they're tired?

Today was busy, busy, busy! That means there was little time for all of my exercises...eek!  Good thing today was a day of only stretching and not strengthening.  The busy-ness may be for the best, as it prevents me from overdoing things.

No time to write - tired. Hopefully, I'll be able to crank something out tomorrow.  I need to also spend a little more time reading about new exercises to incorporate, including more core stabilization and increased hip mobilization.

Day 2, Going strong

All is going well with the rehab, thus far.  Exercises at this point are easy, although quite boring.  Sticking with them is what is important right now, along with taking it slowly and trying not to do too much at once. Adding one to two new exercises per week is more than enough, so I have to keep that in mind.  Although what I'm doing seems like nothing, I just have to stick with it.

I tried to work on some stretching and release work today, focusing on mobilizing the posterior hip joint.  I have some new exercises to try out along this vein tomorrow, but today I mainly focused on sitting on tennis balls. It worked wonders.  As I said earlier to my roommate, why pay money to have a physical therapist push on your butt when you can do the same by sitting on a tennis ball.  I saw the same immediate results that I had seen when my therapist did posterior mobs.  The test is hard to explain for someone who isn't up on PT lingo, but I'll try.  Laying on my stomach, knees bent at 90 degrees, my legs would fall out to the side nearly hitting the ground, but would not move inward to nearly the same extent.  This mean I had decreased external hip rotation.  After the mobilization work, I would see a huge increase in this motion.  Sitting on the tennis ball did the same.  It seems to be working!  Good news!!

That's all for today.  Maybe I'll have some more time for stories tomorrow.

What's with the title?

Foggy Goggles? That doesn't make much sense.

Clearly, I was a swimmer.  I suppose I still am a swimmer - it's not an identity that one parts with easily.  This could be due to a multitude of reasons, but eccentricity seems to be a common theme, as does a lack of desire to shave one's legs regularly. Because of my injury, my position has switched.  No longer do I swim.  Rather, I coach.

The oft heard mantra is true here: Those who can do. Those who can't, coach. I've also heard muttered around the world of academia this little phrase: "Those who can teach.  Those who can't teach teachers."  I must be an extreme "can't" because I don't just coach...I coach Masters.

There are plenty of stories I could tell about this endeavor, and I'll save those for a later date.  I've discovered, though, that coaching adults is not that different from coaching children, much to my chagrin.  There are some perks, namely post-practice drinks and weekend hang-outs.

Many masters swimmers come to the sport late in the game: after an injury, looking for something new, or wanting to boost their triathlon performance.  Others are former college, club, or high school swimmers who want to stay in shape.  It's quite the range of speeds and abilities, but it makes the job* fun.

The other day, an older lady who was never a swimmer complained to me about her goggles being foggy.  "I just bought them," she said. "I can barely see out of them, and it's giving me a really hard time."  I explained to her that foggy goggles were just part of the territory and you learn how to tolerate them and how to prevent them.  Some masters swimmers buy anti-fog spray.  A waste, if you ask me.  All swimmers know that nothing works as well as a little saliva.  Goggle licking? Just part of the game.  This tried and true secret solved all of her problems, and she was thankful that I passed along this little nugget of practice survival gold.

So the mystery about the name still remains.  I swam briefly about 2 weeks ago. I pulled goggles out of my locker and 2 pairs were infested with dry rot.  The third was wearable, though foggy and scratched.  That didn't stop me from swimming because I knew how to solve the problem.  I'm hoping to do the same to my hip: take it from a roadblock that's been stopping me for years to a manageable hurdle that I can step over and move forward from.  

Instead of saying "Like sands through an hourglass...", "like spit in a goggle" is a phrase more applicable to this journey I'm beginning.

The "scores" from this morning's golf workout.  

*"job" is a term I use loosely.  Technically, I volunteer to coach a master's swim club that the members pay to belong to.  The situation is confusing, I make the best of it.

And so it begins

"Begin" may be an inappropriate term to use in this situation, but it is just that - the beginning of something new. An earnest, focused attempt to take my weathered hip from zero to hero in the time span of one year.  I'll try to keep the whining to a minimum, the effort to a maximum, and the sarcasm steady.  The stories will appear frequently, and the jokes, too, but this is a serious endeavor.  Activity will be scattered, life will get in the way, and I will try to quit.  This blog, more than anything, is to keep me accountable for what I do to heal.

The problem: Anterior femoral Glide (or so we think).  After cycling through a series of diagnoses, this seems to fit all of my symptoms more closely than anything else.  So, we'll go with it.  If you're unfamiliar, feel free to read this or anything by Sandra Sahrmann.  In brief, my butt is weak, my hip flexors too long, and my joint unstable.  The result is pain, and lots of it.

The approach: My own take on rehab, focusing on different aspects of strength and flexibility, leading, in the end, to stabilization, comfort, and ability.  To not be overambitious, I'm going to take this one step at a time, with the first step having three parts:

1.  Glute and Psoas strengthening. Obvious, focusing on engaging the glutes in motions such as walking and firing glutes before hamstrings in simple lifts.  Psoas can be tricky, but will be done.  Reducing hamstring dominance (bad).

2.  Hamstring flexibility. Self evident, helping with the angle at which I hold my pelvis (in combination with above)

3.  Posterior hip mobilizations.  Done, mostly, with the help of others. Aided by some focused stretching and pressure-point work.

Toys.  The planner to keep track of things, a lovely foam roller "borrowed" from my Dad's office, some tennis balls and a stretch cord, and (most importantly) an $8 Tom Erdos Stretch Rope.

To do these, I have a collection of toys and a planner to help me along.  Many of the exercises I do will come from a series of websites and recommendations.  To start, I'll be using this, this, and this for guidance.  Any suggestions are welcome.

The goal: To reduce my hip pain to the point where I can be active again.  I haven't been able to run, swim, play soccer, or bike consistently in over three years, and it's time for a change.  I have a nice little set of wheels (see left: taunting me in my living room) that I'd like to get out on more often, a pair of barely worn cleats gracing the bottom of my closet, and a slew of races that are just calling my name.


Enough for tonight -  I must get to my exercises and then off to bed.