Anyone up for a drink?

I know competitive distance running is not “normal.” I get it, no further explanation needed. Yet, when I went last week to an anesthesiologist, recommended by the physical therapist, to see if he could help fix the nerve problem in my neck, I was not expecting his visceral reaction to my uncommon obsession.

“You know, people drink a twelve pack a day and destroy their livers through cirrhosis. You’re basically destroying your bones and joints with this running just like if you were drinking a twelve pack a day. You might as well be drinking a twelve pack!”

His bluntness combined with my shock and frustration to form some H20 in the corner of my eyes. “Are you okay?” the doctor said. “Yeah, bad allergies today,” I lied. Unfortunately, that allowed him to continue his lecture. “You know this is not normal, you know that right? If you keep running twelve miles a day, you’ll have double knee replacements and a hip replacement by the time you’re 46.”

Clearly he wasn’t listening as I had actually said that I run five to twelve miles a day, not twelve miles every day. Even that was a slight fib, as my long runs are normally longer than twelve, but thank goodness I didn’t go there. I can’t imagine what he would’ve said if he had known I had run a marathon.

He kept repeating, “This is not normal, you have to acknowledge that.” For good measure he threw in a few, “I can give you some shots, but those are just band-aids. You’re choosing to tear apart your body, kind of like people who drink twelve packs every day.”

Lost in his ramblings was my protest that I had run just fine before a weight lifting injury, but clearly it was my addiction to running that had caused the disc between my fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae to bulge, clearly…

Eventually he suggested I try physical therapy. Ask my bank account, I’ve tried physical therapy! He finally relented to actually examining my neck – novel idea, for a doctor to examine a patient instead of just looking at the chart – and acknowledged the trigger points. He gave me a trigger point injection, but kept emphasizing it was only a “band-aid” and would keep coming back unless I ran three miles or less per day, preferably on a treadmill.

I finally got out of his office and went about the rest of my day, but couldn’t stop contemplating the fact that a medical professional had actually equated running with alcoholism! Ok, if running is so abnormal, why do I do it?

Well, there are a million reasons, from the obvious (cardiovascular health, bone density, weight control, etc.) to the corny (skills like discipline, focus, teamwork, etc. and lifelong friendships). But there has to be something deeper that gets me out of bed to run when it is 30 degrees, dark and the covers are so darn warm.

Perhaps it’s just that running has become habitual and I don’t want to change. Perhaps I’ve formed so much of my identity through being a runner that I don’t want anyone to see me as anything else, don’t want to let anyone down. Perhaps it’s my faith in medical technology that those knee replacements will be so advanced by the time I’m 46 that I won’t even feel a thing. Alas, I know that none of these reasons gets me to do mile repeats or a tempo run.

I run… because it’s hard. Call me a masochist, but there is something about pushing your body and mind farther than you thought you could that can’t be replicated with any drug or sedentary activity. That’s the idea behind those team t-shirts you see at high school meets that say “Our sport is your sport’s punishment.” The beauty of the sport is in its difficulty, the fact that no matter how hard we try we will never be able to convince every single person to become a runner. It’s just too hard. Running is also beautiful in its simplicity. It’s the sport that we were born to do; yet, also the sport that’s hardest to consistently do, the sport that is so easy to not do.

In the heat of an intense run you confront your own demons, the voices telling you to stop. But, you don’t stop, because stopping would be too easy, and running, running is hard.

I’ve always liked quotes. I like the idea of plucking the most profound wisdoms that people have uttered out of their universe and into my own mental library, hopefully learning something vicariously. This movie quote, with a one word substitution, explains the reason why I run, instead of drinking a twelve pack every day. It’s from A League of Their Own, which was filmed right here in Indiana (Bosse Field in Evansville). Replace the word “baseball” with “running” and my point is made. To set the scene, Dottie has just told her manager, Jimmy, that’s she’s quitting to move home with her husband Bob, who has recently returned from the war.

Dottie: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all.
Jimmy: I, I gave away five years at the end my career to drink. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.
Dottie: Well, we're different.
Jimmy: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.
Dottie: It just got too hard.
Jimmy: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.

Ay ay ay

I have not written in awhile because the last two weeks have been rather bizarre and I doubt I can accurately capture it all in words, but I'll try...

Three weeks ago today I did a decent cut-down run then 4x400m on the track with Ben, with the last three 400's at 72 seconds, not bad for a long distance girl. Nothing hurt, nothing felt too bad. A few hours later I got up from my chair at lunch and all of a sudden my right hip was very tight, but I could not tell exactly what was wrong. It bugged me for the next week, getting slightly worse every day until that Friday when I could only squeeze out four of my planned eight miles. Luckily, Ben talked me out of doing the twenty-miler that was scheduled the day before I left for Chile (yes, as in South America, my job is kind of crazy sometimes!) so I went to the meat market (a.k.a. campus rec. center) and pretended my music was too loud to hear the sorority girl who who threw a fit that I was on the elliptical machine she had signed up for even though there were free ones on either side of me. Got to love it.

I kept my chin up, plowing away at the hotel elliptical in Santiago early in the morning before
walking for hours all across the city every day. I dragged my right leg behind me in a gimpy gallop trying to get across the street before being hit by the speeding cars ignoring the green walking man symbol! Brad and Bonnie (my bosses/professors/travel partners) were pretty proud of themselves for being able to "keep up with me," so I decided not to burst their bubble and kept my injury status to myself. At one point where I almost didn't make it across before the speeding out of control Chilean taxis, Brad finally noticed but I just shrugged it off as no big deal, although in my head I was going nuts over it. What was wrong, and why didn't it clear up already? In desperation I took Wednesday and Thursday completely off, no cross training! The sunshine and red wine helped take the edge off my worries, but they still stabbed at my sharply whenever my thoughts wondered off topic.

At one point in Chile I was laying in my hotel bed and suddenly sat straight up in a cold sweat thinking, "Oh my gosh, what if this is a stress fracture?" So I pushed on the top of my thigh and nothing hurt, and then was satisfied that I was just being a paranoid hypochondriac. When we arrived back in Indiana I made my way over to Rebound to see the physical therapists. Shannon looked at my hip then pushed down on my leg and said, "Uh, let me go get Scott," which I knew was a bad sign. Then Scott came in and pushed down on my leg, twisted it into various positions and then told me that it was likely a femoral neck stress fracture. I managed to save face in that they both quickly left the room to go schedule me an appointment with the pool therapist, so neither saw the tears dripping down onto my t-shirt, my t-shirt from a running event. Running, the lone inner friend of mine that has not left my side since third grade, was now threatening to pack up and go hang out with with the popular kids.

A stress fracture - no wonder it hurt despite taking time off, and walking all over South America probably made it even worse! No wonder I couldn't pinpoint the pain in one spot; the achiness enveloped my thigh in a way no one strained muscle could emulate. I didn't know what to do, so I went to work to take care of a few loose ends from being gone all week. The bad news and the lack of sleep from flying all night (I'm an insomniac and have a terrible time falling asleep while traveling) were all catching up with me and I was walking around Ernie Pyle Hall in an unproductive trance, I need to get out of there.

Still in my trance of self pity, I wandered over to the store knowing that it would be harder for me to be depressed when in the presence of someone who was recently sidelined for four months with a stress fracture of his own. That helped a bit, but not for long. The sense of urgency that helps one get through tough workouts can also be a hinder when trying to be patient with injuries. Jane, Dani and I had such a good thing going with our once-a-week track workouts, long runs and other occasional side-splitting bouts of laughter, things were just starting to get better, now this? Just my luck.

I was supposed to get an MRI the following day, Friday; however, the phone at the doctor's office was malfunctioning and some miscommunication lead to no MRI and an entire weekend of angst. I kept telling myself this was silly - I didn't have cancer, I hadn't been hit by a bus, nobody had died. People are permanently maimed in war every day so I had no right to be upset about a little sports injury. Rationally, that argument makes sense to me, but I'm figuring out that sometimes rationality doesn't factor into the equation the way we think it should. I was still pretty upset about the situation. It is nearly impossibly to use logic to change your emotions, or the emotions of anyone else. That is why elections aren't about policy positions as much as public opinion, public relations, favorables and unfavorables, but I'll spare y'all a political science lesson...

In my anxiety I did what any member of the millennium generation would do, I Googled "femoral neck stress fracture." Bad news bears. Phrases like "crutches," "career-ending," "surgery," and "metal pins" swung right off of the Web pages to punch me in the gut. It didn't help that I had taken even more days completely off and my right hip was aching worse then ever, also contributing to my lack of sleep. I spent the weekend in the nursing home with my dad helping my grandma who had a stroke right before I left for Chile, and I honestly contemplated borrowing her walker, it was pathetic.

All sorts of thoughts floated through my head over the days of uncertainty. I thought about how I might be able to become a cyclist if I couldn't run well again. I thought about getting into coaching and volunteering at road races to at least stay involved in the sport. I even thought about the possibility of becoming a track official so I could get the best seat in the house at all the big meets, not to mention the free food in the officials' tent and those snazzy looking polo shirt and straw hats! I was grasping for anything I could, trying in vain to "always look on the bright side of life."

In the middle of all of this, my college coach was packing up and leaving for Tennessee. It was hard for me to see the woman who was the only reason I came to Bloomington now leaving herself. It brought back a flood of memories from my five years of collegiate running and that made it even harder to imagine that it could possibly be all over. As much as she was a coach, she also was a good friend who probably knows more about me than anyone else, and her departure definitely added to my state of melancholy.

Slowly but surely the weekend came to an end, then finally Monday was over too, then Tuesday morning took it's sweet time until eventually I was getting an MRI. Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning were equally lethargic as I counted down the minutes until my appointment with Dr. Steiner at 11:15AM on Wednesday to find out the results of the MRI. He asked me a few questions, then went back out to look at the MRI. I strained to hear what he was saying as I recognized his voice through the wall, both talking to his nurse and calling someone else. Eventually he came back in and asked if I would like to look at the MRI. After three different physical therapists had told me they were pretty sure I had this stress fracture, I was not expecting the good news - the MRI was negative!

I was so excited that I didn't even care that there was no concrete diagnosis for my pain. No matter what the cause, surely I would recover from it better than I would recover from a femoral neck stress fracture! I called and texted a number of people before returning to work in a significantly better mood, despite having to listen to my dad's response that this should be a lesson to not go so hard and that I should be more careful and blah blah blah... non-runners, and specifically non-running parents, just don't understand sometimes...

I felt silly for shedding so many tears over something that turned out to be nonexistent, but oh well! The next day I went to aquatic physical therapy at Rebound East with Amanda and she said that my right side is very tight and that my "pelvic girdle" is unstable. After putting in so many miles, my body is now revolting against the muscle imbalances likely caused by a few years of incorrect strength training (thanks a lot IU).

Yesterday I ran for the first time in two weeks, 15 minutes on a treadmill in Chicago while escorting some journalism students on a media networking trip. It was short and my right side still feels quite different than the left, but I have never been so happy to be injured because at least I'm not as injured as I thought I was! This little fiasco will clearly alter my training and racing strategy for the rest of the track season; yet, the fact that I even have a track season to worry about now is quite uplifting. The last few months have really been an emotional roller coaster, so I'm hoping this latest loop-de-loop is signaling the end of a descent and the beginning of another upward swing. Click clack, click clack... slowly climbing back up to the top!