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Pills and needles instead of kilometres

I went for a bike ride today. I went for a swim yesterday. Two days without running. That’s not what I want, but that’s all I can do. I have an inflamed tendon in my right knee. Running is not an option these days. Pills and needles are.

Last week I spent more or less four hours in treatment rooms. That of my general practitioner and that of a physiotherapist, who is specialised in dry needling. Both pushed and pulled on my knee, bent my legs in angles I didn’t know my legs could be bent in. Both came to the same conclusion; the tendon on the inside of my knee is inflamed.

RELATED: Grand Trail du Saint-Jacques; my first DNF

Adductors or hamstrings

They disagree on the cause of the problem. My general practitioner thinks it’s my hamstring. The physiotherapist agrees with her colleague, who I visited last week. She thinks my adductors are causing the problem. She has put a needle in my adductor magnus. That was bullseye. The needle was shaking like crazy and I felt something pulsating in my groin.

I’ve got an old injury there. About a year ago, I think, I did yoga and something didn’t feel good. It’s like my left groin is elastic, while the right is like a piece of dried out elastic. It stretches, but with a cracking sound. Now – a week after the treatment – it feels elastic again. Let’s hope the adductor magnus was the culprit.

I’ve got a couple of more knots in my adductors. I’ve tried to massage them out, without effect. The physiotherapist told me that sometimes knots are too tied to massage away. Something harder is needed. Like needles. I’ve booked a couple of more sessions before I go to Chamonix to run the UTMB CCC.

Restless

I have to admit, not running makes me a bit restless. Especially when I see my training plan that says that I should do 110 kilometres this week. I know I’ve trained a lot. If I’m not able to run the CCC now, I won’t be able to do it at the end of August. Yet, if I don’t do anything, I just lose fitness. That’s why I’m biking and swimming. To keep at least my endurance on a good level.

The idea is that the needles and rest will take away the cause of the inflammation; tight muscles and overused muscles. To get rid of the inflammation, the doctor prescribed me some anti-inflammatory drugs. My belly isn’t too happy with them, but hopefully my knee is. I’m not a fan of taking pills. To be fair, I’m not a fan of needles either. But I’m a fan of trail running. So hopefully the pills and needles will do the trick.

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