More than the sum of the parts?

The reason my marathon was such a write-off was because my training had been severely impeded by knee pain, and we couldn’t determine the cause.  For months I had been working under the premise that I had a knee injury.

In November, I went to see a new physiotherapist who specializes in sports and running specifically.  I won’t bore you with the details, but she told me that the pain in my left knee is the result of an imbalance that is causing my right piriformis to compensate for something my right hip is supposed to be doing, which is causing my left ITB to be pulled taught, which is pushing my patella off to the side.  While it could have turned into an injury if not corrected, it is not an injury per se.  Fascinating!

What’s more is, she figures it isn’t caused by my running, but by everything else in my life.  I am sure many of you can relate when I say my life is very asymmetrical.  I always carry my bag on the same arm.  I get out of my chair at work in the same direction, which also happens to be the same direction I get out of my car, and out of bed every morning.  I always put my pants on starting with the same leg, and tend to hold the phone with the same hand.  Over time, this repetition causes slight imbalances in the muscles – a repetitive strain, if you will.  Throw on top of that the fact that I have terrible posture when I sit at my desk, which is basically all day everyday.  Then, I ask my body to perform the very symmetrical task of running, and have the nerve to assume the problem is caused by the running.

I guess the point here is that I wasn’t looking at it holistically – I wasn’t seeing my body as a system of interconnected parts that is influenced by all of the activity in my life.  On one hand that makes maintaining my running-health more complicated, because now I know I need to think about all of the things that I am doing that will either contribute to, or alleviate the problem.  On the other hand I am kind of glad that’s all it turned out to be, because that, at least to some extent, is something I can control.