Leg Up

Reach down and give someone a hand up.
A small thing with great impact.

James Kelly

The last couple of years I have struggled with a nagging hamstring tightness that I just could not seem to shake. Running on the flats was no problem, but in my neck of the woods there are very few runs that are flat. Every hill with any kind of a grade gave me great difficulty. The left hamstring would protest at even the shortest of climbs. I ran this way for a long time thinking that I was just getting old and I would just have to make the best of it. Finally, the tightness in the hamstring moved into my lower back and made it hard to even sit in the car for any length of time.

I have had the back thing before, a trick hip that likes to go out at any given time. I did my usual thing in that case, off to the chiropractor. One look and he just shook his head. "How long have you been walking around like that" he asked me. I didn't have to answer, he had my records. I hadn't been in to see him for five years.

Hey, snap, crackle, pop, guess what I don't have any more. No, not the pain in my back, it's the pain in my ham that's gone.

As seasoned athletes I think we sometimes have the idea that we can work through the pain or the injury. Trust me, give yourself a leg up and the second you think something is wrong, go see someone who really knows what it is.