Sciatic Nerve Pain feels like maybe an alien impregnated your upper ass. You know, you wake up one day and think "Did Aliens abduct me, and implant their unborn inside my lower half? This hurts! Shooting pains down your hamstring, into your calf, your arch, etc. Oh, it's terrific when this manages to simultaneously hurt your buttock, hip flexors and groin. Marvelous mess to manage.
Why am I talking about this you wonder? Those who know me well, have heard the story. "I jumped awkwardly over a stream during a trail race, landed hard, felt the shot of pain and have never been the same since". That summarizes it, that happened in 2010. To avoid the pain entirely I am fairly sure that quitting distance running would have been in order. To hell with that!
It is incredible how much pain distance runners are willing to deal with...just so they can bring on more pain by hard racing. The workings of this mind state probably resembles a skipping record (for the kids in the crowd, research 44 and 78rpm records, ya know that old crap before digital download).
Age telling metaphors aside, I am convinced of the following:
1)Chairs were a bad invention and most of them suck.
2)Our lives have come full circle from hard-easy-way to easy-hard because we made it too easy.
3)I am more than ever considering that training as a survivalist is probably the way to go.*
Managing this is a challenge. Periodic and repeated stimulation of the upper gluteus, hamstring and calf seem to help a bit. Stretching/Yoga also seem to help. It is difficult to tell sometimes if in fact my Piriformis muscle is the culprit of these pains, or if it is only the sciatic nerve that is affected from my the discs in the L4/L5 area
being impinged.
For certain, one of the most effective treatments overall is just digging into the my glutes with my thumb or rolling on a lacrosse ball.
I have managed to crank out some decent mileage despite the pain in recent weeks. But that my friends, will be the topic of another discussion.
*Moderately held belief in an impending Zombie Apocalypse. ;)
Why am I talking about this you wonder? Those who know me well, have heard the story. "I jumped awkwardly over a stream during a trail race, landed hard, felt the shot of pain and have never been the same since". That summarizes it, that happened in 2010. To avoid the pain entirely I am fairly sure that quitting distance running would have been in order. To hell with that!
It is incredible how much pain distance runners are willing to deal with...just so they can bring on more pain by hard racing. The workings of this mind state probably resembles a skipping record (for the kids in the crowd, research 44 and 78rpm records, ya know that old crap before digital download).
Age telling metaphors aside, I am convinced of the following:
1)Chairs were a bad invention and most of them suck.
2)Our lives have come full circle from hard-easy-way to easy-hard because we made it too easy.
3)I am more than ever considering that training as a survivalist is probably the way to go.*
Managing this is a challenge. Periodic and repeated stimulation of the upper gluteus, hamstring and calf seem to help a bit. Stretching/Yoga also seem to help. It is difficult to tell sometimes if in fact my Piriformis muscle is the culprit of these pains, or if it is only the sciatic nerve that is affected from my the discs in the L4/L5 area
being impinged.
For certain, one of the most effective treatments overall is just digging into the my glutes with my thumb or rolling on a lacrosse ball.
I have managed to crank out some decent mileage despite the pain in recent weeks. But that my friends, will be the topic of another discussion.
*Moderately held belief in an impending Zombie Apocalypse. ;)
