This is not a torture in Guantanamo...

Acupuncture with electric stimulation...
I guess that relying  to my TENS machine from Compex might be more or less the same effect.

Blog post done live with needles in...

Acupuncture ....beyond belief

Friday The back was aching so much at I eventually decided to pop into the "physical therapy" clinic in Dongguan.
Honestly speaking, my confidence in the medical care services in Chna is low.... Knowing how most things work in China is enough to make me doubtful whether the doctor in charge might have actually gained his degree properly or via some backdoor arrangement.
Also because any public institution cares about avoiding an unsuccessful handling of a foreigner, the response can drift in 2 opposite directions:
- being taken care in an utmost dedicated way and assign the best resources
OR
- at the opposite, the institution will find every possible way to get rid of you ASAP or to even not acknowledge the need of their activity, in order to navigate away from potential troubles and loss of face
These 2 approaches can happen either going to then hospital or to a police station to report a crime (my personal experience on this has been mixed...) or at a building bureau office to buy/sell a property....

Going back to my back... I was just aiming for a light massage when the therapist on duty had actually other ideas... Using the approach #1 Of deploying all the resources, she called 2 other doctors to check on my back, asking all the possible questions on how happened and firmly said that what I needed was acupuncture...
My reaction was kind of "wtf!!!" but I relented after making sure that needles were disposable single use, etc, etc...
I thought they would have places the needle somewhere in the back.....but soon I realised that I will have needles planted in my hands and head...
To make it short, to my absolute horror, I had a needle right in the Center of the forefront and others in the back of my hands...

I was even asked to walk around 15 minutes while "wearing" them...

Well, you would not believe it, but after that I was able to lift by myself from the bed without help (something which was unthinkable until 20 min earlier) and I could say there was a 50% improvement in back mobility....I even tried the bridge position without pain and effort...
I left the clinic almost in shock....

spell of bad luck continues

I do not want to sound a whining kind of person, since overall I enjoy a very good life...
but runningwise, the past 2 months are going from bad to worse...

the spell of bad luck which begun on July 19th continues at full speed...

- last week: run decently while in Europe, the hamstring and glutes were starting to get better even if I still could not handle any fast pace... foot pain had his ups and downs..

- week-end: between the trip, jet-lag, etc.. I decided to skip running for 3 days to give some time to the body to completely heal (foot, hamstring, etc...)
I also feel refreshed by the fact that I have now fairly understood the root cause of each problems, thanks to the excellent running gait analysis done at strideUK (more about that in the next post...)

- Monday: for no apparent reason, my back become very stiff and painful ... I did not lift any weight or did anything strange, but I was completely blocked...

I tried the usual therapy, without much success...

The attempt at a releasing back massage on Wednesday was almost pathetic and funny at the same time: once the massage was over, I could not get up from the massage bed... the massage therapist was in tears fearing that she could have been sacked for screwing up the back of a foreigner; so she called other staff and they together handled me like I was a wooden pole to put me back in vertical position...

Thursday I got some benefit from doing some electro-stimulation of the back and at least I can walk properly...

so... another week of total screw-up and going from bad to worse...

Weekly totals: 0 Km run, 0h0' bike, 0'0' gym....

Due to a lot of time spared from being incapable to run/walk, etc I had the time to read 2 books on Kindle

1)
Charlie Spedding

From Last to First: How I Became a Marathon Champion

This is a real interesting book... Spedding takes the time to write about all his career from childhood race to his retirement. It is very interesting how he describes all the mental obstacles he overcome to become a Olympic medalist. He was for sure a talented runner, but not really achieved much until later in his career when he "changed gear" mentally. It is also very down to earth narration, very humble and without the hype and self-celebration typical of these kind of books
All his ups and downs are well narrated and makes it a compelling read...

 

2) Running For The Hansons: An Insider's Account of The Brooks-Sponsored Marathon Training Group Made Famous by Olympian Brian Sell

Sage Canaday is a runner in the Hanson-Brook team and gives this narration of his everyday life as pro runner who tries to make a breakthrough into "real" Elite running, while having to work to anyway cover the bills, etc
The book is written in the form of daily journal and while it will not win a Nobel Prize for literature, it is a good easy read...
It is somehow interesting to see how just below the real elite level, the life is quite harsh and the guy basically just live around "poverty line"..
We might read about the Alter-G and Aqua-treadmill of some runners, but this guy does not even have time/means to do some gym...
Interesting to read also how their training schedule is based on 2 days easy/1 day hard without sticking to a static weekly schedule...
Lastly, I like how he candidly tells about his personal opinion on several aspects and how it might be difficult for a person coming from West or East Coast in USA to go and live in an area like Michigan with much different set of community values...