I was a runner in a former life

I haven’t run pain free since October.

On October 31st I was at mile 21 of a marathon when my leg completely seized up and I had to walk limp to the next aid station, wherein I was driven to the finish. Since then I’ve run several times. Some runs pain free some not. All of them fear driven.

I felt my IT band throughout the later stages of my half ironman last summer. I’m 99% sure that it came from an ill fitting bike. Every brick, it was there. During the race it reared it’s ugly head worse than I’d felt it in a couple of years.

Like many runners, this has been a chronic issue since my first marathon. I learned how to keep it under control. Until now.

I felt it on my last 22 mile run before taper. I cut it short to be safe, but there it was. I ignored it all through taper. It didn’t hurt, but I put it out of my head refusing to acknowledge it. And I barely ran. I was trying for a sub 4:30 marathon. My training was spot on.

At mile 8, it started. It was at a stage 2. By mile 16 it was at a stage 6 and I had already taken a couple of stretch breaks. By mile 18, stage 7. Finally at mile 21 it was full blown code red and I physically could not bend my knee. I walked 1/2 mile to the next aid station with a bum leg and silent tears of defeat.

Over the next several months enter: time off, cortisone injection, physical therapy, fancy sports medicine doctor, more physical therapy, more time off, video gait analysis, podiatrist, casting of my foot, orthotics, and graston.

I finally gave up on running about a month ago. It has become a source of stress and anxiety rather than the loyal head-clearing friend I had grown to love so much. And I’m fine with it. it’s like I hit rock bottom or something. Trying so hard to fix yourself so you can get back out and run yourself into the ground again.

My new approach: If you love something, set it free…….something to that effect.

The marathon eludes me. Maybe I’ll be back to settle on some unfinished business, but once I’m healthy again I’ll be content with racing halves. Hopefully.

Quitting running, albeit temporarily, has proven to be hard in some less obvious ways.

First, you really learn who your friends are. I realized that A LOT of my friends are only running friends. When I wasn’t able to run, I rarely saw most of them. That sucks.

Second, I work at my local running store. You can imagine how lame it is constantly explain your injury to customers. Every day faced with the fact that YOU CAN’T RUN.

Third, blogging. What the hell do I have to blog about? And reading blogs that revolve around running is no fun either.

Soon I will venture out for a run. If it goes well, great. If not, I’m perfectly content perfecting Crow Pose.

Race Report: Hagg Lake Open Water Swim

I use “race report” very loosely here.

Saturday I drove down to Portland to stay with my girl alisa. It was a three hour drive and I arrived around 4. It was the first time meeting a fellow blogger and I was pretty stoked about it. Of course we hit it off and never ran out of things to talk about. We went out for a killer greek pizza and wine. In bed by 10. She was an awesome hostess and made me feel super comfortable to be there.

The plan for Sunday was to do an open water swim. My first of the year. 2000 meters. Then after we were going to do a bike ride. 50 (ish) miles. And then maybe if we were feeling like rock stars a short 10 –20 minute run afterward.

2 words. FUCKING COLD. Not only was it cloudy and chilly outside but after we donned our wetsuits and asked ourselves what the fuck we were doing there in the first place, we finally got in. OMG. Seriously. I wonder what the temperature was. 55* maybe?

It’s even colder than it looks.

 

As soon as I put my head down my diaphragm immediately rejected the notion that I  was actually going to exhale underwater. After several attempts I finally gave up and decided to just deal with it once we got going, hoping that the adrenalin would kick in and my brain would figure it out.

We started out in the middle/back inside. As soon as we started taking off it was a total clusterfuck. (side note – I was totally surprised at how many people were doing the 2000. Maybe there was 120 – 150 of us) Anyways, I immediately hated everyone around me. The woman going painfully slow in front of me, the chick behind me hitting my feet, the guy beside me. All of it. I still couldn’t put my head down enough to get a decent stroke going and I was inside my head so much I finally just swam to the shore (only about 30 meters). I stood there seriously considering quitting. I felt like I stood there for five minutes, but in reality it was probably only about 2. I finally decided quitting would be to hard to live with so I sucked it up and went for it. I just pushed the cold aside and finally began to warm up. It was much more pleasant being away from the crowd as they had all been ahead of me by now. I got going and got into my groove.

About the halfway mark I was over it. Get me the fuck outta here is what I thinking. How badly I wanted to swim back in and call it a day. Could you imagine. No way. I just kept on keeping on. “Just a few more strokes to the next buoy. Ok, the next buoy is just right there, keep going…” So on and so forth. Finally I began the looooong stretch into shore which seemed like it was getting farther away rather than closer. Finally. I could stand up. Done.

My watch time was 46:38

Not bad. Not good. It just is. Overall, very pleased. This was not an easy feat. Anybody that sucked it up and stayed in that water for more than a few minutes is basically a badass because that shit was not easy. Alisa is a super badass and was totally waiting for me when I got to shore and took a couple of pictures of me getting out. I think she had already showered and blew dried here hair by the time I got there!

The plan was to go directly for a bike ride. Thank you portland for being a total bitch and raining on us. We were not feeling that badass. We stripped down to our birthday suits wrapped ourselves in towels and cranked the heater in the car while we make our decision. To bike, or not to bike. While we were discussing our options it started raining. That made the decision for us.

We were super disappointed about that and decided to just hit the trainer for a couple of hours. After stopping for coffee on the way back to her house, we decided just to go for it and get on our bikes (it wasn’t raining at the time we made this decision).

About 7 or 8 minutes into the ride my stomach started cramping up like crazy. I’d never experienced anything like this. it was bad. I couldn't even stand upright. To make things worse it started pouring. pouring is an understatement. One of these issues would be miserable, both was unbearable. Alisa went on ahead, got the car, and came back to pick me up. I literally crouched next to my bike while the cold wet rain pounded me. It was brutal. (btw, Alisa was such a good sport and felt so bad for me she hauled ass to her car and when she came to retrieve me she was still wearing her helmet and shoes! Seriously selfless act.)

Eventually the cramps subsided, but I was really worried for a while there.

I made it home safe and sound, but that was not a fun drive.

NO clue what brought those pains on. It was acute every time I inhaled. The only new addition to my life is perpetuem, but I’m not sure if I even took a drink of it yet. Plus, I didn’t premix it (you can’t premix it because it spoils). I added the powder literally minutes before we took off on the bike.

A mystery for sure. Hopefully it never happens again.

Overall, meeting with a good friend and successfully completing a seriously challenging event. Successful.