Fly Like an L6.

Last week I started having some lower back pain reminiscent of my bulging disc woes circa 2010. I shrugged it off as the result of perhaps a weird sleeping/sitting position, but by the time I had finished my (craptacular) 4-mile run on Friday, the pain had started radiating and shooting down into my right hip.  I promptly called a local chiropractor and made an appointment for Saturday morning.

Fun fact: I apparently have an L6 – an extra lumbar vertebrae – and my immediate, totally rational reaction was, “MY LIFE HAS BEEN A LIE.” According to the chiro, that little spinal bonus isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it will need to be monitored, especially when it comes time to bring another Stauts into the world.

On top of that discovery, we also found that my hips and L4 and L5 vertebrae were way crooked, and the shooting pain I was experiencing was textbook sciatica. The good news? After a session with a moist heat muscle stimulator and a number of adjustments to my hips & lumbar vertebrae, my lower back pain is gone.  The bad? I’m on strict orders to stick to no-impact activity (read: no running whatsoever) until I go back on Tuesday, lest I mess up every correction he made. AGH.

Needless to say, my 9-mile training run was definitely out of the question, and I’m feeling pretty thankful for our trial pass to LA Fitness right about now.

Before I started running, interval training on the elliptical was my cardio-of-choice. However, it has been a hot minute since I’ve actually been on one, so I printed out this full body workout from Fit Sugar and brought it with me to keep things from getting boring.

Courtesy of Fit Sugar

With the particular machine I was on, I couldn’t do anything of the pushing or pulling with the arms, so I upped my SPM, added a bit of time to the workout, and did a short upper body strength training session afterward, working up enough sweat to not think about my newly imposed running ban. The struggle is real.

My husband is nothing if not timely.  For Valentine’s Day, he gave me a figurine of Ganesh, a Hindu God generally revered as the Remover of Obstacles and the Lord of Beginnings. Hopefully, the deity’s arrival in our home marks a change in things both mental and physical. In the meantime, I’ll be repeating “Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha” until I’m blue in the face.