Injury - Sciatica

So, you may be asking yourselves, why haven’t I talked about any recent races or, at least, some interesting training sesions. The reason is that I am suffering from that most feared of all situations for an endurance athlete – Injury!
Not just an injury that is going to keep me out of training for a week or two, but something that could keep me away from serious training for over a month, or even two. Considering that my plans for this year were to compete in at least two Olympic length triathlons between May and June, a 45k trail race in July and a 100K trail race at the end of August (this is also my ‘A’ race for 2009) it looks like my training is not getting off to a great start.
So what is the problem. This is the same problem that I have already had five years ago. The initial problem is a slipped disc in my back (actually two years ago they were two but it sems that this time round it is only one). If you don’t know what a slipped disc is here is a diagram which shows how part of the liquid contained between each of the vertebral discs squeezes out of it’s lodging. This is actually not such a large problem, but you see that wiggly bit that comes out of the spinal cord. That’s the sciatic nerve. This nerve extends all of the way down through the hip, continues through the thigh, knee, calf and eventually comes to rest in the foot, depending on which part of the spinal cord it started from. Now here’s the thing with the sciatic nerve – it really doesn’t like getting all mixed up and pushed around by this liquid from the disc and starts to get really annoyed. This general annoyance is communicated to the rest of the body by sending nerve pain signals straight down the leg. So depending which of the discs has this leakage problem the pain can arrive in the hip, as far as the thigh, down into the calf or even all the way to the foot. This can be seen more clearly in this diagram. Now, how did I get into this situation. Five years ago I managed to do it by running five marathons in the space of 12 months, the last of which was also extremely hilly (and I’m talking mountain hilly not gently rolling hilly). On that occasion I had liquid seeping out between my L4 and L5 and between my L5 and S1 and (if you refer to the diagram) this was causing me pain from my thigh to my foot. This time round I aggravated it by doing too much off-piste skiing with lot’s of far too athletic movements and jumps and god knows what else! This is not a recent photo but it gives you an idea of the kind of things I was doing.
Luckily (it seems) the slipped disc is only between L4 and L5 so I only have pain from my thigh through to my calf – let’s look on the bright side. The worst thing about this is that there is no actual cure. Rest – as in sitting around and lying down are no good because these positions actually aggravate the pain. Walking slowly is actually the least painful thing to do. But, of course, I cannot train as in running and cycling though the doctor says I can do some bland swimming – yeah like that is going to get me somewhere on race day. So I “rest”, take anti-inflammatory drugs and wait for the liquid to dry up and the nerve to calm down. After which it will be lots of physiotherapy work in a swimming pool, bland swimming and a slow return to serious training. Stay with me and see if I actually manage to compete in my ‘A’ race.