I'll try to do a brief recap of what's happened since the PB Chip Chase.
I was trying to heal my left ankle by resting, icing, massaging, to no avail. I did occaisional runs to see if it improved much. Finally went to my doctor, at the end of March I think, who said it was where the outside edge of my achilles tendon inserts, and to give it two weeks icing 3-4 times a day, using heat on the ankle before a run and ice immediately after. Wouldn't you know, in two weeks it was all better, but two days after seeing the doctor, my right knee started giving me problems.
After looking at anatomy pictures and descriptions, it seemed like my new problem was the tendon of the semimembranosus muscle in the hamstrings. If you sit in a chair, feet on the floor and tense your hamstrings, you can feel three tendons under your knee. The semimembranosus is the higher up of the two tendons on the inside of your leg. Mine seemed to be irritated right there and sometimes when I bent my leg from straight position it would feel like it was being plucked. I figured since I was icing my ankle I'll just ice that as well.
A few days after that the same knee started getting some bursitis-like symptoms, which running seemed to aggravate. It would feel like pressure was building up between femur and tibia when it was bent and which was releived by straightening. Upon straightening, the knee would pop softly and if I repeatedly (5 -10 times) bent and straightened it would pop a little louder each time until the last time it when it would click and feel fully releived. The joint also felt a little loose. So I didn't run for a few more weeks.
The ice didn't seem to do much for my knee. What seemed to help after 2 weeks of frustration was a vigorous massage. I'd hold my knee between my hands and move them up and down and back and forth, oppositely, kind of like rattling my knee except without any sound. This would give immediate relief of the bursitis symptoms for anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours. So I repeated this as often as needed and in a few days felt better enough to run again. After a few weeks of that, during a period of heavy rain and I used the elliptical for exercise two days in a row, the tendon problem felt a lot better.
So now, the semimembranosus is out about 98%; I still feel a slight pluck sometimes but the area isn't sore to the touch like before. The buristis isn't all better but the joint doesn't feel loose and there's not the constant slight ache. There is still some pressure build-up but the popping and final click are a lot less.
In getting in the five runs a week and in lieu of the recent injuries, I started out with low mile runs, 1.5 to 2 miles per run. I'm now up to 3 to 3.5 and the injuries are still pretty minor. My achilles problem did come back but I've been keeping that at bay with massage and ankle exercises.
All in all I feel pretty good. Soles have thickened up nicely with minimal callouses.
