Running Mania

Hi all, this forum has been an amazing resource and inspiration for me and just wanted to quickly share my recovery from a herniated disc for future forum searchers. Long story short: started running in earnest in about 2008. Herniated a disc in my back a couple years later (L5-S1). Bad herniation. MRI confirmed shortly after - and re-confirmed by MRI two years later (doctor said he would have preferred to see it shrink more than it had in 2 years). Stopped running when I first herniated it. Tried to run a few times over the next several years - but couldn't make it past .5 km before shooting pain down leg etc. Anyway, about 6 months ago I got a standing desk at work (at the advice of my neuro-surgeon who thankfully didn't want to do surgery on me until we tried everything). About 2 months after getting standing desk my symptoms drop noticeably. Decided to start running again. Amazing. No pain, no issues at all. Just ran my first marathon today. Can't really describe how amazing that felt (shed a few tears in the last couple kms).

Not sure whether it really was the standing desk (could just be correlation), but I'm a convert. Something to try for those of you who might be dealing with herniated discs. Cheers.

Great info. Good to hear of someone getting better from trying "outside the box" therapies. Congrats on your marathon finish!

Thanks. I really lucked out with a back surgeon AND a neurologist who didn't want to do surgery on me. I was very lucky.

i had a similar issue with my back and i'm still not back to running (it's been over 2 years). soon after it happened, i did some reading about the dangers of sitting for long periods, and built a treadmill desk (PhD student at the time, so i worked from home a lot). i ran the TM at a very, very low speed. i loved it! when i move, i'll set up a permanent design with a bigger desktop. this one was sort of makeshift and i stopped using it when i got into heavy deadlines.

i can run very short intervals, but any longer and i can feel it in my back. i should probably make more of an effort to use it again.

congrats on the marathon! i'm still at the "it's so nice to walk without pain" stage, so i can imagine how awesome that would feel.

Congratulations on that marathon! As a fellow runner with back issues (sciatica), I can appreciate how hard you worked, and how much perseverance it took to get there.