Mr Miyagi and other stuff

As many of you know, I suffered a pretty painful calf strain Saturday during the 2nd mile of what was intended to be an 8 mile run, which turned into a 1 1/2 mile run and a 4 mile walk.  Well Sunday I knew this was pretty serious, as I could barely walk.  More of the same on Monday, although I was able to do a 6 AM Spin class with Joe Mitchell.  So yesterday, not only was my calf still hurting but I also awoke to a severe "crick" in my neck, so much so that I could barely turn my head to the right at all, which you will find quite a disadvantage when driving, or just doing anything in life really.

So being that I am not one to seek medical treatment all that much, out of sheer misery (I was also on day 2 of no caffiene which I was trying to cut out, and have since relented until after this is over...one mountain to climb at a time thank you very much).  I took the advice of my friend Doug Ward from a friendly Facebook suggestion and sought out the services of Dr. Bert Solomon at Performance Theraputics (www.ptknoxcom), which although I had no idea before going there, had recently been acquired by Covenant Health, our sponsor.  I have now decided to deem Dr. Bert the Mr. Miyagi of East TN for his miraculous (okay, maybe not miraculous, but seriously good) therapy on my calf and neck.

Again, for those of you who have known me for some time, know that at one time I was a pretty decent football player, but all that came to an abrupt end when I suffered a fracture to my C-5 vertebrae in my neck.  So I have been to a few Chiropractors in my day, and usually know what to expect.  Dr. Bert is in a different league.  Literally, within 20 minutes of him walking in the room, I went from barely being able to move my neck to the right, to almost able to take my chin to my shoulder before I felt pain.  In 20 minutes.  I feel like I am a pretty good judge of character, as I meet and talk with people all day long and have for several years now, so I can usually tell if somebody is engaged in what your saying, listening, and knows what they are talking about.  Dr. Bert was all of the above.

He applied a technigue on my neck and calf called ART© which I won't go into detail here, but long story short it works.  I feel a ton better.  So if you have any nagging sports injuries or other things, you just might want to go seek out someone that practices that technique, and if your in Knoxville, go see Dr. Bert.

Also, I have scheduled my Runner's Evaluation with Phil Blevins, which is a service offered at Fort Sanders where they will check you out to see how you run, any issues you have, etc.  So I am definitely excited about that.  You can see what all they do here.  http://www.covenanthealth.com/evaluation

Between that, meeting up with Ciara our nutritionist to further to refine my diet, Chris O'Hearns mental and physical training, and all the other support from Missy Kane, Joe Mitchell, Phil Kaplan, and Tonya Stoutt-Brown, as well as all my teammates of course, I can say that I feel really good going into this month that I am going to have a lot of success.