Ouch

I paid a visit to the chiropractors yesterday. He performed a lot of muscle tests on both legs, which rapidly showed that my right leg was much weaker than the left. It's usually the other way bround as I favour my right leg; it's the strongest.

He established that my pelvis was twisted out of alignment and set about crunching it back into place. It went back with a string of cracks, one after the other. He also adjusted my spine, pushing down firmly from the base right up to between my shoulder blades. Quite a few vertabrae slipped back into place too.

Finally, he crunched my neck. Again it was out of alignment on the right side.

As soon as he'd finished I performed better in the muscle tests. Immediately the tendon pain in my knee eased off as well. So, something worked.

Today I saw the Physio. I know it was a good session because it really really hurt. I was in agony when we was working on my calf muscles. I told him he needs some leather to bite down on, attached to his treatment table!

The lump I mentioned on my calf appears to be very very tight muscles. I forget which ones he said, but he said they were inside my calf muscles, deeper towards the bone. He spent 40 minutes on my right leg, also stretching out my hamstring. Again this was incredibly painful. He then did my left leg. I had not experienced any problems this week with the left, however it was equally tight in the same places and hurt an awful lot too.

He checked my back, which after yesterdays chiropractic session was fine as I'd expect.

Finally he did 10 minutes of ultrasound on my right leg. The knee tendon and hamstring.

I left the room sore. He advised more rest days, and less mileage.

I'm not running today (Tuesday's session), but I will see how I get on tomorrow. I'm also going to really work on stretching my calfs. I stretch them after every run, using the push against the wall stretch that you see all runners doing.

However, my gym instructor showed me a better one. Find a small step, keep the heel on the ground and raise the toe end upwards to rest against the step, then push against the wall. You get a much stronger stretch. It's painful at the moment, so I know the muscle is tight.

I'll see how I get on this week. Everyone is advising me to take it easy for a week or two. I know this is good advice, but so close to the marathon this is when my training is peaking and I should be running the most! I have a good base of fitness and I should be able to jump straight up to 20 miles in 2 weeks time. I'll take it easy for a week or two. Try and keep up the speedwork and not do so many miles.

I'll keep you posted.