Bending and adjusting for health and fitness

For over a year I've been frustrated. Here's why:

• An abdominal strain that forced me to run the 2011 Frederick (MD) half marathon slower than I wanted to.
• A calf strain that caused me to not run the 2011 Survivor Harbor 7 (miler) and defer the Baltimore 10 Miler.
• A stress fracture in my foot that made me give up running completely for the last three months of 2011.
• Slow recovery from said stress fracture causing me to run the 2012 Cherry Blossom 10 Miler over 13 minutes slower than when I last ran it in 2010.
• Aggravating a hip injury that caused me to walk the last 2.2 miles of Baltimore's Sole of the City 10K a few weeks ago. (I haven't looked because I'm too ashamed, but I'm sure I was one of the last 100 out of 2500+ finishers).
• That same hip injury that made me blow off last weekend's Frederick half marathon and forced me to give away the great jacket given out as a premium.

The list is, sadly, getting pretty impressive. As it is I don't know what the cause of it is or what to do about it. Maybe it could be age. Maybe I could stand to lose a few pounds. Maybe I could be wearing the wrong shoes. There are a lot of maybes. One of those maybes comes from my friend Aubry, an acupuncturist, chinese medicineologist, and someone I like to refer to as the Official Hippie of The Running Moron blog, even though she has no clue she's been awarded that designation. Seriously, she put a lot of time and effort into earning the knowledge she has and I don't take what she thinks lightly.

Anyway, Aubry thinks all of my issues over the past year are related. And she thinks the connective tissue throughout my body is out of whack. And she thinks the solution is Rolfing.

Although "rolfing" sounds like something extremely filthy -- have you seen that disgusting video with those 2 girls and that 1 cup? In my opinion, that could qualify as a definition for rolfing (If you don't know what I'm talking about don't look it up. Seriously. Watch this video of someone's dad watching it instead.) -- it's really just a program to reorganize the fascia in the body, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to meet a professional Rolfer in a few weeks to start and I am terrified. I don't know why, but it seems like this whole ordeal can't possibly be as calm and soothing as described. I mean, if my fascia -- my fascia! -- is out of whack it doesn't seems like something can be straightened out without a lot of oohing and aahing and owwing. Also, it doesn't seem like the most manly thing a man can subject himself to.

On that note, I have a cousin who swears by yoga for helping her overcome the effects of hip surgery. Lo and behold, a Groupon was available for 20 classes at the very studio my cousin haunts. So I bought it. I go for an intro class in a couple weeks and then I guess I'll figure out how to get through the next 19 classes. If the idea of Rolfing seems a little less than manly to me, I expect yoga to make me feel downright feminine. I'm even more scared of yoga than I am of Rolfing and expect something like this in the class or group or pod or whatever they call and studio full of yoga-ers or yoga-ists or whatever:


With all the kneading and prodding and bending and stretching I'm about to take on just to get myself in shape to run without injury I can't help my but think that this is what running has come to for me: doing uncomfortable things in uncomfortable positions uncomfortably in front of other, probably uncomfortable people. Terrific. Terrific.

Oh, well. I'm sure it'll work. Heck, it better. I better not de-man myself for nothing!