Queenie's Christmas Massage

Merry Christmas everyone!

I did a tempo run this morning, the first bit of sustained speed I've done for 5 months. It was tough but I'm glad I could do it.

Without the power of massage I doubt I would have been able to run this morning. I've been relying on my massage therapist to keep me going over the last few weeks as I've built back up quickly. With Xmas upon us I've had to rely on my own self massage to keep me going.

My calves were the first to complain, but I was able to keep them nice and loose with some regular gentle massaging (Molton Brown massage oil - fragrant!). Then after the 9-mile Sunday run my knee was aching because of a tight quad. More Molton Brown and a bit of vigorous massage and it was all fixed. (It's tough doing an intense massage yourself - it felt like quite a workout.)

Then yesterday I stepped off the bottom stair to be greeted by an intense pain in the ball of my left foot. It was a slight concern as I've never had anything like that before, but I realised it was most probably a tight muscle in my foot trapping a nerve; the foot muscles don't get used during cycling so they have presumably took a bit of a beating since my return to running. I iced and heated during the day and tried rolling a tennis ball under my foot, but when I did my core exercises in the evening I was still getting pain. I got the oil out and had a real good go at the sole of my foot. I could feel a mass of tight muscle back towards my heel and a slightly crunchy feeling in the middle of foot. A few minutes of vigorous fiddling later and the pain was gone.

This morning I applied a heat pack and did some more gentle massage before my run as my foot ached a bit. The run felt fine - my foot had a rather warm feeling to it but there was no sign of pain or soreness. Massage rules!

I won't try to teach massage techniques on this blog - you can google "self massage" if you want to. What I will say is always use oil, massage towards the heart (or you could damage your veins by creating a back pressure), and don't press hard on any trigger points you find, just keep moving firmly over them until they ease. (You may want to google "trigger points" too.)

Happy seasonal massages!