My first sports therapist visit

Wednesday 30 May 2012 - I went for a session with a sports therapist to try to make some sense of my hamstring troubles.

She went through a series of massage techniques and then some stretches.

I had been warned - by other runners and the therapist herself - that the process could be quite painful, and I had gone along prepared to be in tears at some stage. However, there were very few moments where I experienced anything even remotely painful. The therapist said that I must have a very high pain threshold.

The outcome from the session was that there is nothing obviously wrong with my hamstrings.

In addition to the high pain threshold, I was also pleased to find out that I have good arches in my feet.

So the search for what is actually causing the pain/tightness/etc continues.

The candidates include:

Shoes
My trail shoes are the number one suspect here, so I am going to put them to one side and see if anything changes. (see below)

Stretching (lack of)
I'm pretty inconsistent with my post-run stretching, so I will make sure that I leave time to stretch after my running sessions.

Not enough salt in my diet (causing cramping)

I'm not quite sure about this one but I will investigate it anyway.

--

I have been going over my running log and the first instance of the issue was a few weeks after I started using the trail shoes on a regular basis. The reason that I had not really considered this before is that I sometimes have the problem after runs using standard road shoes, then again it could be a delayed reaction to a previous run in the trail shoes.

So I'll see how I get on over the next few days and weeks by not using the trail shoes, stretching religiously and making sure I eat some additional salty foods every day.