One week ago today I was running in the canyon when I experienced a cramp behind and a little above my knee. It came out of nowhere and wasn’t associated with any sort of specific exertion. Initially I figured that it was pretty hot and I hadn’t brought any water and that dehydration may have been a factor (and indeed it may have been). But after a couple of days still experiencing the tightness I began to think differently. It appeared that I had done something to my hamstring again. This being the second time in the last couple months I have had issues here and the problems I have been having in my hips (specifically right side) has really gotten me questioning how much I can run anymore. A huge part of me says BS and that my age and the ms have nothing to do with this, but I think maybe I need to reevaluate what I can do successfully in the future. There is another huge part of my thinking that says this is just an injury that I need to get through and that rest is my best approach. After pondering this I think a combo is probably the best approach and that I need to at least cut back on my running until I can put the hamstring and hip issues in the past.

As far as the hip issues go I am starting to think that the zero drop shoes are part of the problem. Being that I run with a half inch lift to correct for a shorter leg the zero drop shoes are having me hit on the forefront of my feet and erasing the alignment benefit of the lift. I think that my zero-drop feet falls are landing with my hips being out of alignment. With my focus on a mid-strike I would think this issue would be alleviated somewhat, but I also have found myself hitting on the balls of my feet rather that a mid-strike. So I am going to go back to my old standard running shoes and see how they feel over time. My run today was in my old aisics and the felt pretty good. I definitely felt the smaller toe box (I really liked the larger toe box of the Altras) but overall things felt good.

I am thinking that I will try to limit my running a bit this summer and see how things go. For right now I want to keep my running to every other day so I don’t over do anything. Today’s run was just under 5 miles and I really want to become satisfied with shorter runs. Also I will be going quite a bit slower for now. We’ll see how things go.