I have been attending Therese Ryan, for physio, since moving to the Thurles area, in 2022 – Therese’s advice, along with the various physiotherapy treatments have contributed to my athletic development as well as ‘keeping me on my feet’ during that time.
In my initial sessions, a tight back and left shoulder were identified and I got treatments such as dry needling to loosen out same . We concluded that this tightness’s were due to a slight of centre running grit and weakness in the glutes. Therese introduced me to first back loosening, and glute strengthening, exercises before progressing me onto sports Pilates routines aimed at encouraging good co-ordination of knees, hips, glutes and shoulders. The sports pilates exercises, take just a few minutes, and was something I incorporated into my pre/post run activation as well as everyday stretching.
I achieved a number of Personal Bests in 2022 including improving from 5km PB from 18:08 to 15:59.
The last number of years I have caught the marathon bug. With increased mileage, during marathon training, I have developed plantar fasciitis, in the soles of my feet.Therese has helped alleviate this primarily through the use of shockwave treatment. I have managed to get to the start line, particularly niggle free, of the 3 marathons I have completed in recent times – the Dublin marathon (Oct 2023), and the Berlin (Sep 2024) and Valencia (Dec 2024) marathons last year. There was a relatively short period of 9 weeks between the Berlin and Valencia marathons: post Berlin I found the oxygen chamber, in the Physio lab, helped me get over the inevitable post marathon fatigue and helped me get ready for the training for Valencia. A session in the oxygen chamber generally lasts 1 hour.
This year I was delighted to win the 3000m, in the O35 age category, in the national indoor masters championships held in TUS Athlone in March.
Since then I’ve unfortunately developed a case of the dreaded ‘runner’s knee’. I’ve received dry needling, and shockware treatment, in the Physio lab on my knee and I have discussed progress with Therese – all the while trying to follow advice on taking rest days/reducing lower body exercises: it can be hard for us runner’s to do…we’re very good at convincing ourselves that we are ok to run (unless our leg is broken)!
But I am aware that aggravating runner’s knee can lead to a prolonged period out. To test the knee I recently booked a session on the anti-gravity treadmill in the lab:. Therese programmed the treadmill to a specific, 30 mins, strength based workout. This involved the treadmill going at easy/steady paces broken into 2/3 min segments, with increasing inclines in the middle sections. This type of treadmill reduces the impact by 20-25% so the session both tested the strength of the knee and determined if there was any pain in a controlled setting.
Thankfully I felt no pain during the anti-gravity treadmill session. This has given me the confidence to go back doing easy jogging and I confident of returning to full training soon… the sooner the better, I signed up for several summer races months in advance and I don’t think I’ll be able to resist doing another marathon come the fall!