nice ice

long post alert. 

what i'm doing right now.

hey meredith, why are you sitting with ice on your legs?

good question. i'm glad you asked.

tonight i met with a sports therapist who was recommended by the guy who owns the gym where i'm going to bootcamp (we actually met AT the gym). he said he thought he might be able to help with my compartment syndrome, so i was up for it. (that means RUNNING. if it works, i can RUN. and JUMP. WITHOUT PAIN!)

basically i laid on a table and had my legs stretched out. and then some pressure on certain points of my sore muscles.

long story kind of short, the following things were discovered (in bullet point form!):

• my right leg is weaker than the left. likely because of an injury i had a few years ago when i sprained my ankle really bad and had some stress fractures in that leg (all at once. that was fun.).
• i land on the outsides of my feet. when i walk, run, etc. i balance on the outsides. this has made my muscles on the outsides of my legs overwork and the muscles are bigger, making them - tah-dah - too big for their compartments.
• the stretching HELPED! he explained how my legs will be sore for the next few days, and the soreness might be in different places than i'm used to (um, fact. my right ankle was hurting for a little bit when he was teaching me some stretches, and by the time we were done, the back of my knee hurt. so, yeah.)
• i ran around the parking lot. to test the stretching. and guess what, the outsides of my legs didn't hurt, the INSIDES did. because i was focusing on landing on the insides of my feet and taking the pressure off the outsides of my legs.
• we'll see how i feel from here. i'm hopeful, it was pretty awesome to have to stop running because i was tired (weird to say), not because of pain in my legs. 

back to the ice ... i was told to ice them as if i have an injury. so i'm doing that. AND IT'S FREEZING BY THE WAY.

so, ya know, i'm excited about seeing how it feels tomorrow. ;)

OH - my workout tonight was the the stretching and muscle rubbing and learning exercises on the stairs and running around the parking lot once.