So first of all I should say that 3 years ago today I was watching salmon jump upstream at the Falls of Shin near Lairg, just 5 days into John o Groats to Lands End run. Wow, how time flies. It truly seems like forever ago.

After a few weeks of rest following the mini Ultra of RAS I went to see a sports physio specialist. I’ve actually had two appointments now. So far I’ve been given a range of exercises to do. They are all mobility rather than strength based which has surprised me.

As well as finding out that I have tight muscles in my back, hypermobile hips, which can lead to instability and bad propreoception (will explain this one in a minute), I also have a bit of lordosis (pelvis tilted forwards) and I personally suspect gluteal tendinopathy (but thats a self diagnosis – more on that later).

So dealing with each of these in turn. The hypermobile hips (in my case) mean I can touch the floor with the flat of my hands without warming up. I’m not (thankfully in a way) hypermobile in the lateral direction. It’s generally caused by your ball (ball and socket joint in the hip) being a slightly different shape allowing the hip bone to move more. I don’t need to worry about increased risk of hip replacement as there is limited lateral movement. It does, however, mean that my body has learnt to do many movements without developing proper strength in my stomach, bum, thigh muscles.

I’ve done a lot of reading on it and for now it would appear to be safer for me to do more Pilates than Yoga. Although the latter can be very good for you, I have to be careful as I could push a stretch based on my mobile bones rather than my muscles.

Part of ‘getting stronger’ will involve me working on building strength in all the muscles surrounding the hip to stabilise things.

The second thing I mention above is propreoception. I hope I’ve spelt that right. If you are interested, google it. It’s fascinating stuff.

I’ve always been ‘wobbly’, fall over easily, bump into things and yes struggled to park the car. I’ve even found it incredibly difficult to pull out and put back my drinks bottle when on the bike. It turns out this is all very common for people with poor propreoception.

It’s basically the ability of your brain to know where your body is in a space (especially when moving). So yes, you know the table is there in the lounge but your brain is not giving an accurate picture of where your leg is in relation to it. So you clip it, leading to yet another bruise – to join all the other ones.

People with poor preoception can feel nervous descending and typically bump into things around the house without really knowing why they are apparently ‘clumsy’.

You can work on this and improve it. Largely it just involves doing more of the things you are bad at. So the more I cycle and run down technical hills, the better I will get at it. I may just take longer than the next person. It may also explain why I kick rocks all the time when I run on rocky terrain. 🤔

Whilst all the mobility exercises I’ve received from the first physio are interesting and I think are helping my back to loosen up, I don’t feel like we’ve nailed it yet. I’ve taken the big step of contacting a second sports injury physio (one I’ve seen in the past and who ‘fixed me’). Depending on the outcome I will choose one over the other.

The last two weeks I’ve been able to run again with no problems at all. I’m building up the distances very slowly and introducing elevation equally slowly. I was absolutely fine until this Friday when I got over excited and decided to walk up Chinley Churn with the hubs. I love this walk. It’s very steep and without poles hands occasionally get involved. It feels challenging and fun. It’s only 2.5km on the up and the rest of this walk is 3.5km downhill and then 3km flat.

It’s never bothered me before, but on this occasion I felt that familiar tightening in my glutes near the top of the climb. On the way down I could feel more muscles rebelling. Once home it wasn’t painful, but I had severe tightening in the butt muscles, which certainly isn’t comfortable. In the night, I then developed pain on the side of my hip.

This led to Saturday being a rest day and me having a mini meltdown. “Will I ever get back running or hiking…agh”.

Desperate to find out what was wrong I did my usual. Consult google. He’s an expert you know.

I discovered ‘gluteal tendinopathy’. A tendency to have a pain at the top of the thigh (yup), tight glutes (yup yup) and a pain on the side of the hip when you sleep (thrice yup). The advice surprised me though. As long as its mild (which mine is, as the pain is easily only 1 or 2 out of 10) then you can carry on running as long as its on the flat. It would seem that it is triggered by hills. Ahhhhh right then.

So I set off today on a flat 8km run down the canal. Not only did it feel fine but I think it actually made me feel better/looser. Mad huh.

I feel like I’m turning into a medic here. I have no particular desire for this. I just want to know what is going on with my body and be able to run easily and for longer without issues.

Having found this little nugget, I now need to determine if my self diagnosis is true or not. This is where the second physio comes in. I do feel the first one is good but he hasn’t ‘diagnosed’ anything. Most of the suggestions as to what is wrong have come from me. I’m even working on lower stomach strength exercises as I’ve read this is good for lordosis. This didn’t come from the physio/again just my own reading.

I want more direction from an expert really. I could be guessing all over the place and getting it wrong.

Despite all of this I have managed 28km of running/hiking combined last week and 32km of the same this week. I still don’t know if I will be able to do the big long race I’ve signed up for in June 2026 but I have until March to decide. For now I’m on track with my training plan. I just need a little help on how I can get back to climbing hills.

I love the hills. Once I’m better I’d ideally like to spend more and more time running/hiking up to places like Cracken Edge and enjoying the views – bliss.