mothers, don't let your kids tear a hamstring

fisch pulled strings and got me on rudy's docket yesterday, bypassing the whole "need a prescription from your doctor and we'll see you in 2 weeks" bullshit. "any runner of coach fischer we get in right away," rudy told me. saints, both of 'em.

rudy draped my foot over his shoulder and after about 10 seconds of probing found a 3cm tear deep in my intermedial hamstring.

-- what are you feeling right now? i asked.
-- well, it's like muscle fibers run north & south. a tear is a perpendicular break in the flow, as though you've sliced partway through a rope, fraying the fibers and sending them every which way.
-- oh. what do you do?
-- rest and ice and regular deep tissue massage only get you so far: the muscle will mend, but there'll be a lot of scar tissue that builds up in the meantime, and that means the healed muscle won't be as strong. what i'm going to do is push those frayed fibers back together, so they're going north-south again.
-- like deep tissue. like denise's massages.
-- no. not like denise. you like denise. you will hate me. i'm going to work on you for 3 minutes, but it'll seem like an hour. but it's just 3 minutes i promise. and during that time, i won't take anything you say to or about me personally.

whatever, dude. i've met pain before. knitting my obliques back together after my iliac bypass surgery was pretty bad, and then all the lymph and blood moved downward into my labia and for a couple days i had a testicle. very painful, but also kinda novel. i know pain. or so i thought.

when rudy laid into that intermedial i almost bit my lower lip clean off. the pain was so sharp, immediate and overwhelming that i could see it. mr. asshole sado-man behind me then demanded i bend my knee to raise & lower my foot slowly.

-- oh, and finn? i heard through a fog of agony. it'd be nice if you breathed.

right.

i took my ujjayi breathing and went someplace else for a while. when rudy finished an hour (well, 3min) later, i peeled myself off his table and swayed, disoriented and exhausted.
-- there'll be some bruising, he said cheerfully. i'll get you an ice pack and see you again monday. 3 or 4 more sessions of this is all you'll need.
-- 3 or 4 more sessions of this and i could be DEAD, i said in my head, still too cognitively impaired to move my mouth beyond monosyllables.
-- by the end of next week you'll feel 90% better. two or three weeks from now you can go back to intensive training. you'll be healthy and strong for the 29th.

rudy is The Man.