My latest body improvement is that I can touch my toes with my legs straight! I seriously don't remember the last time I was able to do this. My guess would be sometime during my childhood when I was taking ballet. I have always had impossibly tight hamstrings; I could never do the sit-and-reach at school and a lot of the ballet moves were just not happening for me. Fortunately my teacher wasn't terribly strict. I also developed a nasty habit of constantly sitting with my legs folded. Constantly. Whether I'm sitting in a desk with my knees folded up to my chest, or lying on a couch in the fetal position, or lying in bed with my knees half bent, my legs are never straight and I suspect that this has contributed to my hamstrings actually shortening even more. But, with all of this running and stretching after every workout, I seem to be reversing the damage! Granted, this is the bent-at-the-waist-while-standing sort of touching my toes, but small victories.
The run yesterday didn't go as well as I had hoped. We only logged in about a mile and a third before we both had to stop for different reasons. My legs hurt and J's lungs were toast. I also was aware of my foot for the first time while running. My foot was bothering me on Thursday night because I spent too much time standing when we had people over, so it's no surprise that it wasn't fully recovered yesterday when I went to run. It didn't hurt, and the sensation did work itself out, but I wasn't pleased to have any semblance of pain in my foot while I was running. We weren't too stressed, though, about not running as far as we had been. The new course that I had mapped out is all on pavement and largely in the sun, which makes it a lot less enjoyable than running through the trails in the park. I'm going to try to map out another route in the park that will take us the distance that we should be running. We will see how that goes.
The body weight circuit workout has also been going well. I did inverted dumbbell rows with twenty five pounds the last time I did it! It was certainly a struggle, and the rows are in the middle of the routine, but I did all three sets with 25 lbs. Huge, huge, huge improvement. The pull up how to guide says that when you can do the rows with 25 lbs, you are ready to move on to step 2, which is inverted body weight rows. Mwahahaha. I love improvements.
Last improvement to speak of? My arch! I have an arch in my foot now. I wish I had been taking pictures over the last two months, but I was stupid, and didn't. However, the arch is distinctly there, even when I'm standing up. Before, it just looked like there was nothing there. Hooray!
Hey, I don't know if you're still active on this blog, but I know you're still working on this goal, and I just wanted to comment and say that I also have accessory navicular syndrome and have been trying to improve it through barefoot and minimalist running!
ReplyDeleteI haven't had good pain free running days for a while (I've noticed I have good stretches and bad stretches) but the summer before the one we just had I would only barefoot run and I was seeing massive improvements. I went from not being able to walk a mile without limping horribly afterwards, to running several miles through trails with only minor discomfort afterwards! I was thrilled.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to shake the last soreness out of my foot, but I'm leagues ahead of where I was and I know I'll only get better from here. I joined the cross country, indoor and outdoor track teams in my junior year of high school, and had a slew of injuries and realized that I had a bad foot. I discovered barefoot running, had some more injuries cause I wasn't doing it right, and when checking on one of these injuries the doctor told me I had accessory navicular syndrome! It was a breakthrough to finally understand what was happening to me.
I've made massive improvements as a runner, going from never running a mile under 8 minutes to 5:22, which was still not great for a guy in high school track but I don't care I was on top of the world. I'm not that fast right now but running is something I'm taking with me forever, and I try to run with the running club now that I'm a college freshman.
This has been such a journey for me and it's great to hear that someone else is trying to do the same thing!
Hello! I haven't posted in this blog in a long time, because I stopped running for a while due to the heat in Boston (otherwise known as, I am a baby). I have recently restarted. I was getting discouraged with the lack of results that I was seeing. My foot pretty much never hurt when I ran, but it was still progressively getting worse when I stood for prolonged periods of time or walked farther than about two miles. I haven't given up, however, and I have a renewed fervor for trying to alleviate this issue. I have other fitness hobbies now besides running, but I realized recently how much I miss it, so I am going to try to incorporate some indoor interval training into my routine. I hope you continue to have good luck with your own foot!
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