Activating

It's been almost three weeks since I got all excited about running and went out and started doing it out of the blue. I surprised myself both for having the motivation and for how little it affected my lungs. 

My muscles did get sore, however. I wonder if they were surprised too, because the day after I went running, my back gave out on me while we were removing the old granite countertop from our kitchen. Was it purely the effort of moving a giant slab of rock? Or did the unexpected running cause some of the issue too?

I hadn't run in years, and the main reason why was because my back was always hurting when I run, and it was just too much to bear. I figured that I was too fat to be out there pounding the pavement. If I wanted to run, I had to lose weight first so that my body could bear the force of the footfalls.

It took longer than usual for my back to feel better, though. Normally it takes only about a week before I'm all the way back to normal, but this time it was aching for heavily for a whole week, and I didn't feel back to normal until just the other day. Part of that might have been due to the fact that there was constantly more work to do with the renovation of the kitchen, and my wife had me picking up and carrying heavy things plenty even though my back was not 100%.

With my back feeling better, I decided I should get some exercise again, and I went out and walked the trail that I ran a few weeks ago. I didn't want my back to go out on me again, so I thought I'd take it slow.

My back felt stiff the whole time, and I paused to do toe touches and hopefully stretch out my quads and lower back enough that it wasn't a problem. I wasn't very fast as my Runkeeper stats prove.

More than twenty minutes per mile, but it's okay, I'm not out to get a good time, I'm just trying to get into the groove again. Hopefully I can get it going on again soon.

Here's a question for y'all. What kind of a doctor would I go to if I had issues with posture and muscle aches? Is it a physical therapist? Or is there something else? I feel like a lot of my issues stem from bad posture and also possibly from past injuries that I have been compensating for in ways that have caused all new aches and pains.  For example, my back pain is not on my spine. Anytime I get back problems, it's over on the right side of my lower back down in the muscles there.

Don't they have doctors that can help people straighten out and get rid of pain just by changing the way they walk or by doing certain exercises to strengthen muscle groups that should be bearing a large portion of the load but aren't because they're too weak? Just curious. Have you ever done something like this?

I think I may post that question by itself over on Facebook to see if I get some actual answers since not a lot of people are willing to comment on these blog posts.