Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Injuries, massages and fake adjectives

Three friends -- all of whom are professional massage therapists -- have repeatedly offered me free massages during my marathon training. Naturally, I'd feel like a total mooch accepting their generous offers, so I haven't taken them up on it. Until Monday night, when I finally found myself being mercilessly prodded and pummelled by the always-hunky Robbie, who is even hotter and more muscular than he looked at IML*:



*IML = International Mr. Leather, an annual competition not unlike the Miss America pageant -- only with more body hair and fewer clogging numbers -- held every Memorial Day weekend in Chicago. Competitors and observers from all over the world come to parade around in their leather finery and huff testosterone-filled air as though it were airplane glue.

Anyway, back to Monday. Robbie threw all of his 200+ pounds at my IT bands, which didn't stand a chance. After an hour of intense work, I got up off the table with no pain for the first time since I locked up after my 20-mile run two weeks ago. Of course, the next morning, things were pretty much back to their initial levels of pain -- but for a couple glorious hours Monday night I was able to thank Robbie without wincing. (Does that sentence sound vaguely naughty? Do you think maybe we had sex? Or did I just buy him dinner? Aren't you dying to find out? Will these stupid questions ever end?)

Then today I got a free evaluation at AthletiCo, a totally cool physical therapy facility run by and for sports enthusiasts. Mike, the knowledgeable and experienced marathon runner/therapist, stretched and poked and wiggled my IT bands and my bad knee for a good 30 minutes -- completely FREE, mind you -- and 1) pronounced me able to run the marathon, 2) gave me some stretches and stabilizing excercises to do, 3) advised me what kinds of cardio I should do when I'm in too much pain to run, 4) offered a bunch of advice on the appropriate use of knee braces and 5) alleviated my fears about further injuries and subsequent marathonal failure.

So, in summary:
Robbie ROCKS.
AthletiCo ROCKS.
Marathonal is NOT A WORD.

3 comments:

iPhil said...

Isn't it every gay male's fantasy to have (in or out of inverted commas) a masseur? I always thought so.

Two things:

What are IT bands? and...
It doesn't matter that "marathonal" isn't a word, as long as it sounds plausulent, then it's perfectly fine.

iPhil

Jake said...

"The iliotibial (IT) band is a tough group of fibers that run along the outside of the thigh. The gluteal muscles and the tensor fascia lata muscle attach to the top, and the lower part attaches to the tibia, just below the knee."

source (with rudimentary graphics!): http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/itband.v2.html

Andy said...

If you need a deep tissue or myofascial guy - lemme know. Gotta great recommendation.