My body wants me to exercise

A few years ago, as part of the remodeling process in our old house, Chica and I made some concrete counters for our kitchen. Right before Thanksgiving, we needed to move the counter pieces out of Chica's parent's garage. Unsurprisingly, we couldn't convince any friends to spent part of their holiday weekend driving an hour away to help us pick up really heavy concrete slabs and load them into our truck. So, of course, Chica and I did it by ourselves.

For most pieces, this was fine, but there was one long, solid piece that was especially heavy. At one point, Chica was up in the truck bed, I was on the ground holding up my end, and we weren't communicating really well about what was going to happen next. Chica was trying to arrange the padding before we moved the piece into place, and she wasn't hearing me when I said that I really, really needed to be free of the concrete slab.

And so, I pulled something in my lower back. I kind of had the feeling that this would be the sort of thing that would stay with me for the rest of my life--the ache that I could never be rid of. How right I was.

Most nights, I can feel that spot aching. It's not pain, exactly, but it is also not pleasant. I often use Tiger Balm to sort of mask the ache so that I can go to sleep; I usually don't take ipubrophen or other pain meds because then I'd be taking an awful lot of those. I don't know exactly what's wrong--my dr ran some x-rays at one point (inconclusive)--but I haven't really pursued further medical inquiry.

What I do know: running helps. A lot. Isn't that weird? That running would make lower back pain feel better? At some point, I noticed that when I run consistently, I don't feel the ache at night. Right now, though, I've gotten so far off track with exercise that it's aching during the day. That almost never happens. Truly annoying.

But! It definitely made me eager to get on the treadmill today (I ran 2.25 miles). Given how bad it's gotten, it's probably going to take at least a week or two of regular running for me to get this back under control. But that's fine, I suppose, since I need to get back into a regular routine with exercise. At this point, I take motivation any way I can get it.