Slowly He Turned

By: Phil Sneller

After the Austin Marathon I was forced into a 6 week break from running due to a hip injury. The way that my hip hurt, I actually thought it was fractured. That’s what it felt like. It hurt before the marathon and after I raced on it I thought I did some serious damage. I never went back to the doctor though because I assumed it needed time to heal – whatever it was. Besides, I enjoyed not running anyway and I have “thing” about Doctors.

When I’m training 100+ MPW I always think of all the other things I could be doing with my time: I could write a novel, volunteer at the homeless shelter, solve the mystery of the pyramids(were they actually built from the top down?). But all I really did was sit on my couch and put on 15lbs.

It was after stepping on the scale I realized it was time to do something about the hip – it just wasn’t getting better.

Kiplimo Chemirmir of Kiprunning Sports Massage emailed me earlier that week and said, “Come see me, I’ll fix your hip.” I was hesitant because I thought it was something that he couldn’t fix, and I didn’t want to waste his or my time. He told me again, “Come see me, I’ll fix your hip.” So, finally I went, and by god he did. It was absolute torture for two sessions of an hour with no shortage of expletives, but the man fixed it. I was back to running pain free. Big, big thanks to Kip.

I got in 3-4 weeks of nothing but easy running after that, slowly getting the mileage up, and decided to hop in the Chuy’s 5k this past Sunday with two main goals: break 17min, and don’t get chicked.

I was not real confident in my ability to go under 17min after such a long break and not having run anything faster than 6:30/mile in about 10 weeks, but I managed to do it. And though Chris Kimbrough was hot on my heels, no chicks beat me. Success!!

Ok, so now some real work begins and hopefully that 5k time comes wayyyy down. It was just nice to get out there and see some people and be back on the running scene. I’m looking forward this summer to running and training with the Rogue Racers, TRE, and anyone in Austin who’s awesome. 🙂