To Hell and Back

See this face? This is the face of a very, happy girl who is going for a walk in the woods. Only 24 hours ago, this girl couldn't walk or sit on the toilet with out a whole lot of pain coming from her knee.

Yup, I've had a stressfull week. Since my drive to Blackfoot, the pain in my knee got much worse. It was waking me up at night, with sharp, intense, drill-like, mind-numbing kind of pain. I was really scared, in pain and devasted that my season was over. Yesterday, I found myself making appointments with my orthopedic surgeon and my physiotherapist.

Fortunately for me, I found a physiotherapist who was a great problem-solver and together we figured it out. He put my knee through the classic motions to quickly determine that my knee was solid. A crazy physical examination followed and he then determined my ridiculously tight hip flexors were the source of the whole problem. They were compressing the lumbar spine, pulling muscles in my mid back and somewhere in the whole connection, a nerve was being compressed that went directly to my knee. The combination of 3 days of running, sitting on a plane, 2 days off and a long car ride triggered my little episode. Some Active Release followed and boom - I can walk, run and move again. No more pain. He prescribed me one simple hip stretch and sent me out the door. Craziest. Thing. Ever. The body is an amazing thing! What a week.

So, this morning I took the body for a test-drive. A walk-run of 45 minutes on the Spray River Trail. I was having flashbacks of going there for gentle walks post-knee surgery only 3 years ago. Today, my little stroll felt pretty fantastic. I was walking and then I was running and I was waiting for the pain to come, but it never did. It was the sweetest walk-run ever.