Dr. Turtle

Last night, Dr. Turtle paid my hip a visit, and gave it a killer rub-down that will hopefully set me on the road to healing for good...

Back when my Turtle was a kid (tadpole? hatchling?), he spent a lot of his summers in Greece with his family. On these trips, he spent a lot of his time following around a doctor in the village, shadowing him on house-calls and watching him as he worked. This doctor had a belief that a lot of aches and pains were caused by "eegra" (that is my butchered english phonetic spelling), which basically means a build-up of toxins.

His solution for curing the problem? A nice, deep rub-down of the sore spot until the "eegra" has been flushed, popped, or pushed out of the area. To remove the "eegra" from your body, you sweat it out (usually by wrapping said area in saran-wrap over night).

So what does all this mean for me? This translates into me plopping aching feet, ankles and other random body parts (TMI, I'm sorry) into the Turtle's hands and demanding he "Fix me!"

Would you trust this man to fix your running aches & pains?

But don't start getting all jealous that I get free massages from my hubby. This is not your everyday relaxing, aroma-therapied, lighted candles massage. This is one teeth gritting, want-to-punch-him-in-the-head, painful rub-down. Weird popping noises can be heard of God-knows what as he rubs down the muscle (I swear this is how he gets back at me for making him clean toilets). When he's done, I dutifully grab the saran-wrap and tape, and wrap away.


This all might sound strange and weird. But a lot of times, it really has worked. When the Turtle and I first started dating, I was a complete skeptic and brushed off his "eegra" talk like it was nonsense (hey, my mom's an RN...I'm practical). But then, in 2005 I messed up my ankle something awful...just 1 month before the Cleveland Marathon 10K. As the weeks ticked by, I was willing to try anything and handed my ankle over to the Turtle.

After half an hour of the most excruciating massage ever, my ankle was bright red, the arm of the couch had my nail marks, and the Turtle looked all too pleased with himself. But wouldn't you know, 2 weeks later, I ran my fastest 10K ever, pain-free!

Couldn't find a 2005 pic, but here I am with my brother before the '07 Cleveland Half

So, once again I'm placing my faith (and hip) into the hands of Dr. Turtle. I could feel stuff moving around last night when he was working on it, and at this point, I think I'd drink shark pee if it would fix it. I'm sticking to the bike today and tomm, and hoping to be good as new for a nice 9 mile Memorial Day run.