 All righty, it's time for an injury update. If you watched my last video You'll know that I've been struggling with an injury Over the last few weeks and months even if you follow me on Strava You'll know all the details about what I've been doing instead I've been doing aqua jogging swimming cycling elliptical all kinds of things other than running and A couple of days ago. I went to my physiotherapist to get the MRI results. I did an MRI scan Couple of weeks ago and the results are in and I want to share them with you today. Stay tuned So for those of you that didn't watch the last video, maybe don't know what's going on I'll give you guys a super quick recap. I Started getting pain in my left leg Lower leg in the fibula region a few months ago. It didn't go away. It was persistent It was never super bad, but it was persistent and it was the kind of pain that I didn't Recognize as tendon related or or muscle strain or something like that So I sort of thought could be bone Although a lot of the symptoms were not compatible actually with a bone injury a stress reaction or a stress fracture But because it was so persistent and some of the symptoms sort of pointed towards it being bone and I Thought you know could be a stress fracture, I guess and my physiotherapist She thought the same, you know, it's it was kind of weird But maybe it could be and she wanted to do a An MRI scan well actually we did an x-ray and it showed nothing but x-rays are not that reliable when it comes to diagnosing Stress reactions and stress fractures sometimes so we did an MRI scan I got the results and the results are in so Here's the big drum roll question answer and the answer is There's no stress fracture. There was no bone Pathology nothing wrong with the bone nothing wrong with the muscles nothing wrong with the tendons In fact, everything is in tip-top shape All right, so actually if you go follow me on straw life There's a link in the description you can find a post that I wrote there today Where I also posted a picture one of the pictures from the MRI not that that really tells us anything if you're an Expert on reading those pictures, but everything was in tip-top shape shape apparently So in a sense, that's good, right? It is good and it also means that I'm not, you know, super Calcium deficient or something like that or that I can't handle the load It seems my bones and tendons are quite able to handle the load So that leaves us with the question what is going on because if there's no bone issue no tendon issue no muscle issue Why do I have pain because I definitely do have pain? I've had you know at the worst It was like after a workout. I would have shooting pains off my leg like oh You know like Shooting pain going up here and and and it was really bad sometimes But most of time it was not that bad, but it was persistent as I said So What kind of pain is that? Well, we don't know right my physiotherapist speculated that of course, you know Maybe it's a vascular issue. I mean I do have varicose veins on my Right calf quite bad. Could it be a vascular issues? She sort of noticed that one of my veins protruded a little bit more on the left side Perhaps, you know something to look into if this other theory doesn't Work out but her other theory then was that it could be a nerve issue. Okay Right, we've eliminated muscles, tendons, bones There's the there's the vasculature and then there's the the nerves, right? There's not that much left So nerves perhaps there it's a nerve issue and she talked about something that I've never heard about before a new concept to me, which It's kind of weird when you think about it because I'm super geeky and obsessed about Anatomy and physiology and exercise and and I've actually never well I sort of remember now maybe having glanced across and come across this term a few times But I never looked into it. I didn't really know that this was the case, but apparently nerves They move a little bit or they they they need to be able to glide between the tissues and Not only that but if you sit on a chair like this and you stretch out your leg Maybe you can see it, but imagine you're stretching out your leg right in front of you Then you put your neck forward like this You'll notice that it actually you'll actually feel a stretch underneath your knee or in your leg It's not kind of weird putting your head forward makes your leg Kind of feel weird. Well, that's because when you're pulling your head forward You're actually pulling on the nerve the nerve is attached in your head and your legs and in your hands You know extremities basically and as you move You actually pull on those nerves and you have a certain amount of slack and if you use of all the slack like doing this You'll actually feel a little bit of a pull That was new to me. I didn't know nerves. It makes sense, but I didn't know nerves were actually Mobile and inside the tissues and apparently what she said is that she did a mobility test on me She's sort of I was on my back and she pulled my leg up and and I was I Stressed it up like this right up and she pulled it pushed it backward and she said that I had You know below average It wasn't that bad, but it was below average below what she expected. I guess in terms of my mobility my range there You know, I reached a point where I was like, ah, that feels really weird and not good And she she said that that's actually more so than being a muscle in a tendon issue. It's actually my nerve kind of feelings tight As well as my my muscles and tendons, of course And she did a few different variations on that and and she confirmed that I was I needed to work on my mobility in general, but also my neural mobility so And I also should notice that my left leg was slightly worse than my right leg Which is interesting because my left leg is where the injury is or the pain comes from because I guess then there's not really an injury per se, but there's just persistent pain and so Yeah, so I've been researching neural mobility and you know, you come across things like neural flossing and neural glide and This whole idea that you know, the nerves sort of move within the tissues or maybe the tissues also move around the nerve and the idea is that I Don't think you cannot actually increase the length of your nerve. It's very inelastic, but it's Maybe you can I haven't I don't I'm not an expert on this topic yet. And but apparently, you know Perhaps there's it's a possible. I guess it's a kind of like a little bit I mean, it's it's not a hardcore science kind of thing where there's not there's not been that many studies Sort of confirming exactly how this works. It's a lot of the evidence is anecdotal at this point But there has been some studies showing some Benefit or some some truth to the whole concept, I guess but I don't know enough about it yet to really speak about it too much but My understanding is that and she's sort of hinted to this I think that perhaps there was an initial injury in the summer when I did a little bit too much too soon after Starting up again after my Achilles issues Maybe there was a little bit of an injury maybe some trauma to the tissues and there was perhaps some scar tissue development and that scar tissue is now sort of impinging on the nerve a little bit or In Basically causing it not to move as as well between the tissues so perhaps it's just that perhaps it's just that when I'm running and when I'm doing these things I I actually Sort of inflame this area a little bit and the nerve is irritated could be Who knows it could also be in a back issue. I guess I do have Schiattica pain sometimes especially when I'm driving for a long time. So there is an issue there It's quite common, of course to have these kind of nervous issues, especially Schiattica and so Yeah, I'm researching the topic and I'm doing these exercises like three times a day Just like moving through this neural flossing. That's what it's called They're sort of flossing the nerve through the tissues and so I'm just doing that I'm stretching more and I'm putting more of a focus on my stretching basically to to improve that mobility and the neural glide And that idea so that's the situation. I guess if it turns out this is the case then That's amazing because that means I can do something about it and I'm trying to do something about it now And even if it isn't I'm still learning because I probably do need mobility anyway, right? I am quite stiff which is you know to a certain extent good as a runner to be stiff But on the other hand you don't want to be too stiff and causing injury and not allowing your You know your running stride to be optimal so Yeah, I've got something to work on and I love that and I've actually been able to maintain my fitness quite well through the Aquajogging and swimming and everything so when I went out running for my first run, which by the way felt Amazing the other day. I've been out for two runs now just 15 minutes each Nothing beats running for me. It's just like it's a whole different universe of movement. I Like sport. I like fitness. Everything is fun in the fitness world almost but running is just a whole new another level because it's just so natural and Well, it just felt amazing to be out there. So What am I saying? Yeah, so I maintain my fitness very well with the aquajogging regime and the swimming and everything Actually, I feel like I haven't lost any aerobic cardiovascular fitness at all felt pretty much the same as when I Stopped running eight weeks ago But of course my load Tolerance is is what's actually decreased over eight weeks. I don't have any tolerance to load now So now I got to build it up very carefully. I don't want to get injured this time. So I'm being very conservative I'm gonna just build my mileage over the weeks week after week after week And we're looking at probably eight to ten weeks until I'm back to where I was this summer with about 50k per week So just gonna do it slowly this week is 10 kilometers this week next week 15 And we'll just solely slowly work our way up to 50 and then in the new year 2021 We'll probably start. Well, we'll definitely start building from there 50 up to 60 to 70. We'll work our way up probably back to a hundred by 2022 Okay, so we're gonna be careful. We're gonna focus once we find the right mileage bond We're gonna stay there for a little while and and maybe Hopefully do some races next spring. I'm thinking probably do a 10k and a half marathon Maybe a next spring and then the marathon will probably be the next fall actually because I won't be able to get my mileage up my Kilometrage up to sort of marathon level before then because of these Hiccups, I guess in my in my plan But I've learned a lot from the situation. I'm actually perfectly happy with it I'm cool because I I got to enjoy swimming. I'm still enjoying it I'll be supplementing my a little bit of running that I do now building up I'll keep doing all the aqua jogging in the swimming as long as the pools and the gyms stay open because it's kind of weird now It might close down. I hope not and So I'll keep that just to have volume in there and then I'll slowly sort of get to a point where I Do more and more of my training is running But I might even still continue doing aqua jogging long term because it's a great way to add some volume without impact Might be a good idea. So let's wrap it up No severe injury. I can go ahead and run. There shouldn't be an issue. I need to be careful building up I've learned a lot neural Mobility, okay, interesting concept. I'm gonna look into it more. I'm gonna do it every day and we're gonna see if it helps That's it. I don't know if I'm gonna travel this winter or not, but We'll see we'll see Thanks for watching. Thanks for following along. Please check out my coaching I have a link in the description if you're interested in a training plan custom training plan or anything like that and Follow me on Strava Instagram and of course subscribe to this channel. I'd love to have you with me here I'm gonna try to do more videos. I've been doing an extra part-time job on the side these days because I haven't been you know that heavily training and have some extra energy and To do other things and I need some extra cash basically. So I just did that And so I've been busy not making videos and I want to get back to videos. I really do. So I hope to be able to Get back into it now that I'm getting into my groove again and running and everything feels a little bit back to normal Hopefully and yeah, that's it Thanks for watching. Give it a like and I'll see you in the next video. Bye