I have been battling with some weird injury about 2" below my right knee for several months. When I finally went to the physical therapist, I was basically told not to run for several weeks or do anything that aggravates the injury. It doesn’t hurt to bike or swim. I’ve been biking, swimming and using the rowing machine for a bit, but I really really miss running. I was thinking about the whole aquajogging thing, but am limited to when I can get to a pool.
I was wondering what you guys/girls think about rollerblading? I “think” it is a low impact exercise, right? I used to think it was kind of weird and I honestly haven’t seen anyone on rollerblades for many many years. Maybe it was a fad or something, but I really want to get back out there to maintain my running fitness. I’ve got an Oly in mid-September (Nation’s Tri) and if I want to even have a chance of beating the mayor of DC, I need to stay in running shape so I won’t be sucking for air during the 10K run portion.
My one experience to rollerblading was back around 1996 and I borrowed a friend’s set and fell back and thought I almost broke my wrist. Haven’t thought about them since then until now.
Thumbs up or down on the whole rollerblading thing?
i am not a fan of being indoors, but how about the elliptical machine at the gym? i have known a couple of people who were not able to run due to injury, but able to continue training using the elliptical - though i heard the aqua-jogging is great.
You also need to figure out what is cuasing the injury. If you rest and don’t do anything to fix the problem once you start training again it is bound to come back. It is important that why you are allowing the pain to subside that you work to solve what is causing this so when you start training again you are good to go and don’t have to worry about it coming back.
Yeah, I really wish I knew what the heck was going on with my leg. I’m in the military and went to the military doctors (at Bethesda). They ruled out stress fractures and it is not in an area where shin splints should be (in the front of my tibia, about 2" directly below my knee). Have you ever bumped your shin into a coffee table and it felt like your bone was a little tender in that spot? That is what it feels like when the first few minutes of runningn and a couple of hours afterwards. The pain is not really bad, but it is enough for me to know that something isn’t right. I ran a 1:31 half marathon a couple of months ago with my leg like that.
The physical therapist simply recommended that I come in and get a cortizone patch twice a week for 3 weeks and ice the specific area once a day (doing little circles around the area). I’m really not happy that I don’t know how or why this injury happened, but I answered all of their questions honestly. Maybe I’m expecting too much that they can pinpoint the problem and tell me exactly what I need to do to fix it. That’s really all I want, is for this thing to be fixed so I can prevent it from happening again and move on. But maybe I’m getting old and this is something that I just have to live with.
There’s an eliptical machine at my work’s gym but it is broken along with half of the stuff there.
-Nick
No. And, I’m saying that as someone who actually used to race inline skates.
But if you don’t know how to skate, you’re simply not going to get any cardio benefit out of it at all. Plus, it uses pretty different muscles than running. More likely than anything else, you’re just going to fall over and bruise yourself which can’t be great for training, or for recovering from any injury.
My 2 cents – Do more biking or swimming until you can run again.