OH HEYYYYY! It’s been quite the week gettin’ back to normal life here in New York after my loverly vacation to California. I should be doing my chemistry homework right now.. BUT my brain could use a little break after a long day, so talking to all of you is way more fun.
Let’s back track, shall we?
I ended up spending my last day in California at Disneyland 🙂
David and I both agreed we hadn’t gotten our full Disney fix since the park was really crowded Monday. It was actually quite funny, we were on our way to lunch and I admitted to him that I spent my morning run thinking we should go back to Disney that day… and turns out he was thinking the same thing. So after lunch we decided to make another trip to the happiest place on earth.
We ended up staying until the park closed and had a blast. I highly recommend riding the Matterhorn or Thunder Mountain at night– its’ so much more fun in the dark. We also got a nice bonus of getting to see the fireworks while riding Thunder Mountain.
Definitely a great way to end a great vacation in California!
Sadly vacation and spring break had to come to and end. I must say, I was really impressed to find out LAX has a vegan restaurant– I think I actually squealed with delight when I saw “Real Food Daily” was one of the restaurants in the terminal. I went to Real Food Daily once before in West Hollywood and had a great experience so I was excited to grab food for the plane there.
I ordered the basics bowl with kale, brown rice and marinated tofu with tahini dressing on the side and enjoyed it while watching Tangled on the airplane (you can never have too much Disney). The basic bowl was so goooood and sure beat plane food! LAX is officially my favorite airport, ha.
Since coming back it’s been the usual crazy of balancing school, work, homework and a little bit of fun.
Highlight of the week was going for a run on the Alter-G treadmill at Finish Line Physical Therapy
The Alter-G is an anti-gravity treadmill which allows to choose what percent of your bodyweight you are running on. Basically it feels like you are running on clouds :). It’s kind of weird to explain but basically you zip yourself into the “bubble” and then it inflates with air to take off a portion of your body weight. You can choose what percent of your body weight is on your feet and then speed + incline like a typical treadmill. I’m not one to run on the treadmill but running on one that makes you feel like an astronaut is a whole lot of fun. I liked playing around with how much weight was on my feet versus the speed. I don’t have any major injuries at the moment, but it makes sense why the alter-g is a GREAT rehab tool for injured runners. I still felt the same amount of extortion I would from a run– y’know sweatiness and breathing hard, but without the impact on my legs. A nice little bonus was that I was able to go significantly faster than I usually do.
After running on the alter-g I met with one of the physical therapists to have my running gait analyzed. Even though I wanted to be a physical therapist my only experience as a PT patient is when I injured my shoulder a few years ago. Let me tell you guys, physical therapies work best in such cases and are much better than popping pain killers. I don’t exactly remember the name of the clinic but I went to somewhere similar to this Bridgetown Physical Therapy. I was really interested to get a full evaluation and learn a little bit more about my body and all its little quirks.
One thing that was pointed out to me is my tight hips– not a surprise to me. For as long as I can remember my hips have been super tight… and my love for running and cycling plus long hours sitting a work + school sure don’t help. Apparently this might also be due to the fact that my left hip is slightly lower than my right hip (say what!? definitely didn’t know that!). To help with these issues I learned a few hip mobility exercises.
It was also noted that I have limited ankle mobility and tight calves which might be why I get pain in my achilles while running sometimes.
Everything I found out made a lot of sense, the physical therapist noted that most of my issues don’t seem to be related to strength– so at least I know I’m doing SOMETHING right, ha! I’m trying to do more stretching and foam rolling and this was a nice little reminder of how necessary it is for me.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a lot about running– I’m still pretty new to this and don’t have a lot of miles under my belt yet so to speak, but I was happy to find out that my running posture isn’t a TOTAL mess. I’m hoping in the next couple of weeks leading up to my race I’ll be able to go to a few physical therapy sessions to work on my hips and other tight spots. As a fitness nerd I really loved having someone else analyze my running and look at how my body works. Special thanks to Abby for inviting her blog readers to Finish Line PT!
Have you ever had your running analyzed?
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