Patience, young grasshopper

I do not envy the doctor who has to look me in the eye and tell me I can't run for another 2 weeks when I've already had an excruciating 4 weeks off of running. The look on my face when receiving such disappointing news must have rivaled the stone inducing glare of Medusa; in fact I should probably go check and make sure my doctor hasn't turned into a statue. Going into today's follow up appointment, I told myself that there was no guarantee I would be able to run so don't get my hopes up and that if I had to wait some more time I would be ok with it because at least I have swimming and pull-ups. Turns out, I was lying to myself. I tried really hard not to get my hopes up, but several times yesterday I realized I had this excited adrenaline feeling right in my chest that is usually only reserved for vacation, races or Christmas Eve. Today when I heard, "two more weeks" it felt like Donald Trump had become president and taken away all vacation time and banned puppies, goat videos, Christmas and trail racing. I know, I know. I'm being melodramatic, but I never claimed to be rational about running. I think a part of me thought I would be able to start running today because I had just accomplished the two goals I set for myself for rehab: I wanted to do a pull-up and to learn how to flip turn in the pool. Yesterday I did my longest swim ever, flip-turning the whole way after doing several un-assisted pull-ups in the gym, so clearly that meant it was time to get back to running. Sadly for me, my doctor had other plans.

I am definitely being a bit of a baby: the news from the follow-up ultrasound is actually 99% good. All the things (we looked at 8 different things) are healing faster than would typically be expected. I chalk that up to my will power: telling my body to heal itself or else... and everything except the hamstring is "good to go". It will all continue healing over the next 2 weeks, but I can start activation / light strength training which is awesome. During the initial ultrasound there were so many things wrong I totally missed the hamstring tear being identified. I still don't know if it's a muscle tear or what, but imagine my surprise when the doc said that the hamstring tear had "stitched itself up nicely". The hamstring tendinosis is also healing well, but still has some work to do, which makes sense because that's the only thing that still feels a little funky.

So what can I do? Well #getfishy is going  to a whole new level because I can swim and pool run. I can do activation and strengthening exercises with body weight and bands. I can do single leg bike workouts only if I activate the glutes before, during and after to avoid the left glute from being lazy. I can't walk fast up hill despite my perfectly logical deductive reasoning that since I am allowed to walk and I live in San Francisco, I must be allowed to walk uphill for extended periods of time.

Since I accomplished my first set of rehab goals, I need some new ones. I think shooting for a 2 mile swim workout seems like a good idea, but I would love a strength or activity based one as well.

Here's hoping the next 2 weeks go by faster than the last 2 weeks did. In the mean time, I will be daydreaming of how awesome it's going to be to get to run with a fully functioning left hip and butt and enjoying some non-running activities in Tahoe.