WEEKLY SUMMARY (Jan. 27 - Feb. 2): 40 miles (92.5% E and 7.5% M paces)
  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:23/mi. on a treadmill
  Monday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 6 miles at 7:21/mi.
  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi. on a treadmill
  Saturday: 3 E, 3 miles progressing from 7:00 to 6:30 pace, 1 E on a treadmill (7 miles total)

This week was less bad than I feared it would be, since I ran almost every day and felt by the end of the week like I was on the road to recovery. But I probably have some ways to go before I can do harder workouts again. Monday was the first day that I started to feel like I was clawing my way back to health. My hip didn't hurt when I ran, but that whole area felt weak and tight. Since that run seemed to go relatively well, and it was my fourth day running in a row, I decided to take Tuesday off in order to consolidate whatever gains I'd made and, I imagined, to feel better still on Wednesday. Instead my hip hurt more during my run on Wednesday than it had any other time since my injury. I was close to despairing, but it dawned on me that this was evidence that tightness was a large part of my problem. I hadn't activated my muscles in any way for 48 hours, and stupidly I didn't stretch before running on Wednesday. It relieved me somewhat to think that all this was caused only by tightness somewhere. But where? So many muscles were involved, but what was the root of the problem? That same day I read an article that led me to think that tightness in my psoas was the underlying problem, since apparently that can cause secondary tightness in all the other muscles where I was feeling pain. (Apparently you often don't feel psoas tightness directly because it's such a deep muscle). So I started doing psoas stretches before and after running. Perhaps coincidentally, my next three runs went ok. On both Thursday and Friday I felt looser and felt less (but still some) direct pain along my hip bone (iliac crest). On Saturday I headed to the treadmill without a plan but thinking that I might pick up the pace a bit if I felt ok again. After three miles in the 7-teens I felt fine, so I then went to 7-flat and gradually picked it up every half mile until I got to 6:30/mi. pace and three (more) miles. That's not very fast, but I did feel it a little in my hip as my form stretched out some. The next day (Sunday) I was ok, though, and ran 6 easy miles as normal. That was about the safest possible way to test whether my hip can handle running faster right now, and it was neither encouraging nor entirely discouraging. I'm going to have to keep taking baby steps forward. Today (Monday) I finally had my appointment with a physical therapist. I found a great (but expensive) running-specific PT who put me through various strength tests and videotaped me running on a treadmill. In addition to giving me tips on running form (my feet land too far in front of my body, and my arms swing unevenly) and posture (I slouch while sitting and shift my hips forward while standing, both of which put pressure on my lower back), he discovered significant strength imbalances in my hip muscles. Something has caused certain muscles in my right hip (especially my TFL) to atrophy. After finding my right side to be significantly weaker on some strength tests, the PT started probing around and said that he could feel the difference in the size and tension of certain muscles when comparing my right and left sides. "There's just nothing there," he said of my right TFL. Well, no wonder it hurts. A puny, atrophied muscle that isn't firing correctly will get tight and hurt when dragged through activities that healthy muscles can handle. So what has caused muscles in my right hip to atrophy? The search for an answer to this question was inconclusive. The PT looked for evidence of some underlying lower back problem, but it seemed to me that he must not have found the evidence he was looking for because at that point he started talking about psoas tightness, which is common in distance runners and squares with the tightness I've been feeling well above my hip just below my rib cage (where the psoas attaches to the spine). So he gave me some exercises to do to resurrect the dead muscles in my hip and asked me to come back (and pay more) for some acupuncture that might shock them back to life. I guess I'm relieved that he didn't find any major strain, but at the same time of course I'm annoyed to learn that my muscles are weak and imbalanced. When I was a kid, my dad used to wake me up - after I'd slept through the five previous attempts to wake me up - by quickly pulling all the sheets off me. (Ok, maybe he did it only a couple times, but it worked and I remembered it). I'm going to pull the sheets off those atrophied muscles in my right hip, and I'll even pay for acupuncture if that might help. Maybe this is also what I need to jolt me into regularly doing the ("core") strength exercises that I've known for a long time that I should be doing.