It’s been an eventful few weeks. After stating in my last blog I was back running, I subsequently had to stop again. There were two main triggers. I went on a walk with my husband up a steep hill and I then went to get a sports massage a few days later. The former seemed to trigger tight glute muscles and the latter (after massage of my upper thigh/hip flexor) led to inflammation and pain.

I should add this doesn’t usually happen. I’ve been visiting the sports masseur for years and he is very good. Unfortunately it would appear he has stumbled on an injury neither of us was aware of. I’d had a 1/10 pain there for months and whilst I realised this wasn’t normal; I kept thinking well its just 1/10. How bad can it be?

The good news is that the flare up that followed (where the pain definitely moved to 5/10), combined with pain in my hip whilst sleeping on my side, did lead me to self conclude I have Greater Trochanter Pain Syndrome. I haven’t had this confirmed yet as I’m still waiting to see a second sports physio. I’ve now got an appointment in a weeks time. I’ll not mention my own thoughts and see what they say. I had to try and guess though as I needed to know what I should be doing and what I should be avoiding. If I’m right about my diagnosis, I need to reduce or stop running, reduce walking, avoid hills and stairs (where possible) and avoid squats in the gym. I also need to avoid sitting down for too long or lying on the side of the bad leg in bed.

After two weeks of doing/avoiding these things, it does appear to be getting better. I had a bit of a dip yesterday for no apparent reason, but otherwise on the whole I can now have large portions of the day without pain. That’s nice ;-).

Whilst all of this has been going on, we have finally (after quite a lot of faffage) moved house. It’s a lovely area, lovely house and I’m sure we will be really happy here. Moving, does involve a certain amount of going up and down stairs carrying boxes though. This hasn’t been ideal but hubby has done the bulk of that.

I would say at this point, it is extremely unlikely I will be doing the big race in 2026. There isn’t enough time to build up again and I’m not yet fully recovered to even begin. I’ve read some people have this condition for years so I do hope that is not me!

One night when I couldn’t sleep and I was thinking about not being able to run again, I started googling how people train up to swim the channel (as you do). Did you know that if you are slim’ish that they recommend you gain 2 stone?! It’s to help insulate you as the swim has to be done without a wetsuit and you need to minimise the risk of hypothermia. Got to say, that is more off putting to me than the jellyfish.

I saw a really good video explaining what Greater Trochanter Pain Syndrome (GTPS) is the other day. We have bursas around our body (little cushiony sacs) that are positioned between bones and soft tissues. This particular one I’m talking about is referring to the hip joint. When it’s working properly it helps prevent friction of the muscles/tendon going over the top of the thigh bone when you move. These can become inflamed and less effective leading to pain when you make repetitive movements.

Typical causes of it arising in the first place is increasing your running mileage too quickly (honestly don’t think I did) but also bad running form (yes probably). The latter in turn can be caused by all the things I’ve mentioned in previous blogs: weak core stability muscles, lordosis, hyper flexible hips and so on.

For now I just want a physio to tell me what is wrong (and if I’m right), what I should be doing and what I shouldn’t. My pain levels are fairly low so I might be able to do more than I think. I just don’t know. After that I hope to get a course of rehab strength work to help avoid this happening again in the future.

Unfortunately I had to part ways with the first physio as he didn’t spot any of this at all, and I really do think he should of. The next physio I’m seeing is a running specialist so I’m quite excited about that.

All the above has limited what I can do in the new home/new life. I had been looking forward to joining a runners group to make some new friends. I was also looking forward to exploring the trails and hills around here. All this will have to wait for now.

We’ve joined a gym over the road which is ace. It’s so close, I can go everyday for a short while. It keeps me out of mischief. I’ve also offered to help volunteer locally starting next week. We are of course also exploring the pubs here. You have to!

Moving the cat was stressful. He is the most anxious cat I’ve ever had. The actual moving in day was a nightmare but I’ll spare you the details. Since then he has settled quite well in terms of sniffing his way around the house and finding new places to curl up and sleep.

Yesterday we put in a cat flap. He has decided the lead I bought to take him around his new garden is evil and freaks out if I go near him with it. So we were left with no choice but to just open the door and just let him go out. He managed 5 minutes and came running back in again.

Today he managed another 5 minutes. He sat in a tree directly out the back and then sh** himself when a bird landed on the top of the tree. He promptly returned to safety and went up to recover on one of the beds. It’s a hard life!

To think I was worried about him running off and getting lost. Hah. He won’t move further than a foot from the house! I assume this will improve eventually.

For now my Facebook page will have to be Lorna gyms it and drinks coffee rather than Lorna runs but I’ll get there in the end.