All it takes is all you've got

Nan, I am so sorry to hear about your hamstring woes. Dean (my better half) has been battling this for over a year now -- although I am sure it is different for him (if for no other reason than he is 50 and has been running competitively for nearly 35 years). If you want any details about the things he has found to help (and he has tried many things) let me know and either one of us can give you some ideas.

Bonnie, I would love suggestions. So far all I have done is ART and Chiropractic. After reading Adam's blog I'm wondering if I should see a sports doc too and also wondering if my SI joint could be the problem? Wierd that the pain started in my hamstring and now its in the hip flexor.

Personally, I wouldn't see a sports medicine doctor except as a last resort. Not to generalize too much, but many of them are not really well-versed in over-use or soft tissue injury and their first inclination is to say, "don't run for X weeks and see how it feels". Doesn't address the issue, how it got there or what to do to avoid it in the future. Most of the time, with running injuries in particular, these injuries are due to a fundamental imbalance in biomechanics and without somehow modifying the root cause, even if it goes away (with no running) it will come back.

Having said that, there are probably no fixes that work for everyone ... Dean and I both use the Egoscue method (a mixture of stretching, pilates and yoga developed by a guy named Pete Egoscue -- search for "pain free" -- you can check out some of the exercises without actually entering data on the website, and he has a couple of books that outline his method). This would help (hopefully) correct for the imbalance. Dean has also used a thing called MAT (muscle activation therapy) with limited success - also as more of a correction of the overarching problem, not helping with the acute symptom.

For the acute symptom ... I would suggest looking into PRP (http://www.orthohealing.com/plateletrichplasmatherapy-prp/). This is a technique that Matt Tegankamp used last year for a knee injury he had (http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2893597). The basic idea is you inject either saline or your own platelets into the site of the injury. This causes a natural immune response that will promote healing (as your body will send cytokines and anti-inflammatory proteins to the site. Dean had good success with this. The cavet is that you need to find both a person that does this AND someone (we used our ART guy) to help direct where the injection should go. I would ask your ART person about this, or I can send you our ART guys email and you ask him ... Better yet, come out here for 2 days and meet him. You can stay with us, and we will shuttle you where you need to go, you can talk to John (ART guy - works on Abdi and all the elite athletes in Arizona) and he can probably tell you if that is what you need and find you some folks there if it is. In the meantime, if you would like to talk to Dean (who is more articulate on this subject than I am), I can PM you his phone number.

Sorry this is so long...

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions. I'm certain I could use some pilates/yoga/stretching type exercises. I was doing pilates reformer twice a week as I prepared for TOU this fall, and I just stopped when my son started kindergarten because the time was right when I had to be dropping him off. But I should definitely get back into focusing on my core and hips. I'm going to keep doing more dynamic stretching and core strengthening exercises and see if that helps.

PRP looks intriguing. I've never hear of it, but it makes sense. I'll ask my ART guy what he knows about it today when I go in. To be honest, injecting myself makes me a little nervous but if its effective then it may be worth a try. I wish I had more time to devote to getting immediate attention. As a busy Mom of 3 young'ns my family takes #1 priority; so for now I'll just do whatever I can locally and pray I can heal. I would love to come visit you in AZ sometime though...I'm going to keep that offer in mind. :) Thanks!!

Nan -- you don't inject yourself, but the person who does it might not be a "sure" of where the exact spot is -- but your ART guy would. If he would like to speak with John (our ART guy), I could give you his information. When Dean had it done John went and helped point out the spot on the xray and on his leg one time, and another time he used a Sharpie to point. It really helped Dean with the most acute problem (although, unfortunately I think Deans problem is more severe at this point - we will see what the MRI says).

You could bring your children, we have two dogs who love kids -- they are better than TV's as babysitters!!