Scarred but (probably not) Smarter

It has been written that on the 12th day my legs did rise and run again and yes, my ass hurt like hell. So I was talking to a neighbor later in the day, who happens to run marathons and ultra-marathons and he mentioned using foam rollers, tennis balls, etc. to relieve the pain in that area as well as certain stretches and strengthening exercises that can help. Nothing new here, but it was good to hear that someone else had overcome a similar experience. So I busted out the tennis ball and gave myself a tennis ball ass massage much to my beautiful wife's amusement.

The ball kept hitting something and kind of rolling over it and it felt odd so I tried it on the other cheek (sorry if this is too much information) and the spot that I kept hitting on the injured side did not exist on the healthy side. Yin and Yang, so to speak. So I started thinking about what to do and I decided that since rest hadn't really helped that I would just try to run through the pain and see if it gets better over time.

But (no pun intended) the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. The last few days before I started running again I was experiencing almost no pain whatsoever. Then, within the first 5 steps of my first run, pain to the nth degree. Hmmm. Finally, it dawned on me. Scar tissue. The injury had healed but there was scar tissue built up that was being aggravated when I started running again. Mind you, I'm not a doctor, and this is only a guess. But it makes sense so I'm going to go with it for now.

So I went out yesterday and ran a slow 6 miler. The only goals were to get some exercise and more importantly, stretch out the piriformis (ass) and see what happens. As expected, it hurt pretty good for the first couple of miles and then the pain would come and go. Surprisingly, after the run, the pain wasn't too bad. Uncomfortable, but not intolerable. So I think I have it figured out and I'm going to keep doing the deep tissue massages, be it with a tennis ball, foam roller, or The Stick. I'll keep stretching and strengthening as well and obviously I'll keep running, although very slowly, and we'll see if it doesn't start to get better over the next couple weeks. This is literally, a pain in the ass.