Seven weeks post injury:

Stopped at the office of the awesome Evolution Fitness office in Beverly Hills for my last physical therapy session, at least for a while. Because my primary care physician no longer works in my area, I had to go outside my plan for therapy, and luckily Evolution Fitness came highly recommended. A bit pricey since I’m not going through my insurance ($150 per session, which includes a discount thanks to my LA Roadrunners Running Club membership), but well worth the six sessions I did with them.

I will be choosing therapy in my health care plan once I select a new primary care physician, which will be very soon!

In the meantime, my therapist hooked me up to an apparatus that can measure my quadriceps strength. She hooked a belt to the ankle of my “good” leg, and after a few test runs, she told me to kick out as hard as I could against the belt and hold for 15 seconds. Taking the best of three “kicks, she switched the belt to my injured leg and we repeated the test. After all was said and done, a calculation showed that my injured leg had 67% of the strength of my right leg. Definitely on the mend, but still a good 4-6 weeks away from full strength, and that’s with aggressive physical therapy!

My plan is to at least “jog” the Mountains 2 Beach half marathon on the first Sunday in June (postponed a week due to local law enforcement not having enough staff to manage the race on Memorial Day weekend, the usual date). No problem: an extra week to get this ship right!

And boy, does that percentage make sense when I run! I find I can’t go more than a couple of miles, at a slower pace than I am used to, before that modicum of strength gives out. If I was not a runner, I would simply “deal with the weakness” at this point and move on with my life: there is very little, if any discomfort! But I have running goals, as we all know, so I need to do more.

And I can’t even run daily. 3-4 times a week is the best I can do for now, but that’s ok: it gives me more time to focus on the monster workouts that I will show you on the next post!!