Yesterday I went out around 5 PM to do hills. After running around town for about 20 minutes I made my way to the bottom of Falls Road, the largest hill in town, and dashed to the top 4 times. I was surprised at how fast I was able to go. It feels like my body isn't in quite that bad of shape after all. Or maybe it was just a good day. The cool, cloudy weather was quite a relief after running in warmer conditions over the past few weeks. Heat really tears me down, and I often find that my best races are run when everyone is complaining that it's too cold.
By the time I'd finished the hills and run back to my apartment it had been about 40 minutes total. My leg is a bit sore today, but I'm not concerned about it. I can walk perfectly fine and it isn't jumping around like it used to, more of a constant soreness this time. If there's one thing I've learned over the past 7 months it's not to worry over injuries. Sometimes you simply need to ignore the little pains, and once you forget about them they'll go away. If you obsess over it needlessly you could make it drag on forever. At least that's how it seems to work for me.
But we all know that I'm an enigma.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
"Keep Stuff Out"
It's not a shoe. It's more like a part of my foot. 5 miles in these things feels so much better than clomping around in mud-caked boots. I only wish we had some decent trails around here.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Sometimes you need to run before you can walk
Sometimes things just don't work out the way they're supposed to. Sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong.
The past weeks have been a bit of an unexpected experience. After the longest stretch of rest I've taken in 5 years, I came to the realization that my leg simply wasn't getting better. At all.
The next course of action was to seek additional medical assistance. I managed to get an appointment with a sports physician at the hospital across the street from CUW. Upon going in for my appointment, however, the experts seemed just as perplexed as the AT's back at school. They took an X-Ray of my lower leg, which showed nothing abnormal. No stress fractures, no other bone issues. Next I was sent for an MRI. When I took these scans in for the docs to see what was going on all they could say was that my leg looked "healthy."
I took this as confirmation that there was actually nothing seriously wrong with me. No one could explain the pain I was feeling or how to treat it. The docs suggested sending me back for the same physical therapy that had already failed after causing me so much unnecessary pain and frustration, followed by a test for "compartment syndrome." This test would have involved sticking me with very large needles and making me run on a treadmill as hard as possible for 15 minutes. They assumed that test would come back negative since I didn't actually present the symptoms of compartment syndrome, but they wanted to do it anyway. They planned to follow that up with a blind surgery, the purpose of which they could not even explain to me. I was utterly astounded at how eager these so-called "doctors" were to abuse me with no real plan for fixing anything.
Having had enough of this, I chose to shun the medical industry once and for all and just started running again.
After a week of resumed training at 4-5 miles per day, I realized that it wasn't getting any worse. In fact it is getting better. Running, rather than causing the pain as everyone had expected all along, is actually healing me. I'm getting stronger every day, and the pain now seems barely noticeable.
Last weekend I went to Lapham Peak with a group of my fellow runners. I opted for the tiny Blue Trail rather than the 9 miles of hills that the other guys hammered out, but running trails again was a major moral victory for me. Knowing that my leg can survive that type of terrain is proof to me that my body is not falling apart but simply needed to be woken up, reminded about what it was designed to do. Dark clouds threatened most of that day but the rain never hit us. Driving home late in the afternoon we caught sight of a brilliant rainbow spread across the eastern horizon.
The past weeks have been a bit of an unexpected experience. After the longest stretch of rest I've taken in 5 years, I came to the realization that my leg simply wasn't getting better. At all.
The next course of action was to seek additional medical assistance. I managed to get an appointment with a sports physician at the hospital across the street from CUW. Upon going in for my appointment, however, the experts seemed just as perplexed as the AT's back at school. They took an X-Ray of my lower leg, which showed nothing abnormal. No stress fractures, no other bone issues. Next I was sent for an MRI. When I took these scans in for the docs to see what was going on all they could say was that my leg looked "healthy."
I took this as confirmation that there was actually nothing seriously wrong with me. No one could explain the pain I was feeling or how to treat it. The docs suggested sending me back for the same physical therapy that had already failed after causing me so much unnecessary pain and frustration, followed by a test for "compartment syndrome." This test would have involved sticking me with very large needles and making me run on a treadmill as hard as possible for 15 minutes. They assumed that test would come back negative since I didn't actually present the symptoms of compartment syndrome, but they wanted to do it anyway. They planned to follow that up with a blind surgery, the purpose of which they could not even explain to me. I was utterly astounded at how eager these so-called "doctors" were to abuse me with no real plan for fixing anything.
Having had enough of this, I chose to shun the medical industry once and for all and just started running again.
After a week of resumed training at 4-5 miles per day, I realized that it wasn't getting any worse. In fact it is getting better. Running, rather than causing the pain as everyone had expected all along, is actually healing me. I'm getting stronger every day, and the pain now seems barely noticeable.
Last weekend I went to Lapham Peak with a group of my fellow runners. I opted for the tiny Blue Trail rather than the 9 miles of hills that the other guys hammered out, but running trails again was a major moral victory for me. Knowing that my leg can survive that type of terrain is proof to me that my body is not falling apart but simply needed to be woken up, reminded about what it was designed to do. Dark clouds threatened most of that day but the rain never hit us. Driving home late in the afternoon we caught sight of a brilliant rainbow spread across the eastern horizon.
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