A new challenge

On the morning of June 29, I went out early and ran a comfortable, pain-free 10K. But by that night my back had tightened up severely, to the point where I could barely move. A few days later, when I consulted a doctor, he put me on a regimen of Aleve and ice, and referred me to a local physical therapy organization. I made good progress with the therapists, whose conclusions were somewhat complex. They found that a muscle in my back (the "QL muscle," or quadratus laborum) had tightened up, thus "hiking up" my right hip considerably higher than the left. This, in effect, shortened the leg, and altered my gait, compressing and weakening the joint between two lower vertebrae. I could not run for most all of July, only beginning with a short, easy 3-mile run on July 31, and since then have kept to short runs (at their recommendation), but am making gradual progress, and this morning (August 13) ran 3 miles again to mark the first time I've been able to run three consecutive days since June 24-26.