Swift Fish Net

Injuries sure are distracting. While I am still not back to 100%, I am finally doing well enough that I actually believe everything will be OK. I will be able to do the marathon I registered for way back on the second day of March. Quite a few of my grand plans for training and racing underwent considerable revision since then. All of this because of a moment’s inattention while on my way home from work on a Friday in mid April…

The Injury

One trip, and down I went. Usually I can catch myself when I trip quickly enough to stay on my feet, but not this time. I came close, but all that did was to make the falling even more awkward such that I fell with most of my weight on my left shin, knee, and arm. I eventually ended up rolled over on my back looking back the way I had come. I don’t remember it being all that painful. I was laughing at myself for being such an ungraceful idiot. I popped right up onto my feet, continued on my way, but I could tell immediately that my left knee wasn’t quite right. I was only able to half jog and half walk the rest of the way home. By the time I got home, I thought the scrapes on my arm and a destroyed watch were the worst of the incident.

By the middle of the night, I thought quite differently. My knee really swelled up and became so painful that I couldn’t sleep anymore and by morning I could barely bend it to walk. I dug some hiking poles out of the closet to help me get around. I spent the weekend icing and taking NSAIDs. In retrospect, I suspect I would have been better off going to the hospital. On Tuesday, I went for an appointment to get my knee checked out. I got some X-rays taken which were negative, and the doctor said it was probably just a contusion. He told me running would be fine if I could stand the pain.

The doctor was an idiot, but so was I to actually listen to him despite my instinct telling me that this was not just a contusion. I was 4 days out from the Pike’s Peek 10K that I had been training for all winter, so on Friday, a week after injuring it, I tried to run again. Running did not work particularly well. Every now and then when I pushed off of my left leg, it just didn’t work correctly, and I would end up just hopping on my good right leg. I felt rather unsteady on my feet. There was no point to wobbling down Rockville Pike in the back of the pack making my knee worse when I was trained to go for a PR. So Pike’s Peek was the first casualty, and I did not bother even starting it. I made another appointment with another doctor.

This time I got an MRI. The MRI was a rather unpleasant experience. The vibration from the scanning was incredibly uncomfortable. I suppose that was a pretty good indication that there was a problem. It took a number of tries before they could get a good image, because I kept tensing because of the vibration. It was like squeaky chalk or nails screeching on a chalkboard. I shudder just thinking about it. At least I finally had a diagnosis a few days later: a grade 2 sprain of my Posterior Cruciate Ligament.

Healing

At this point it had been almost three weeks since injuring it. It really hadn’t improved much despite not running (other than the mile I attempted). I had been biking, so now I had to stop that as well for a week. I spent the next 3 weeks with a knee brace. I did some exercises that were supposed to strengthen the leg muscles and then picked up biking after the first week. Things actually started to feel better after that one week of rest. Then, one night I was getting fuel for my car when something went wrong again. I am still not sure how I managed it just by taking a step, but I apparently tweaked the PCL again. The stupid brace did nothing to prevent it. To me it felt like a muscle might have been involved as well, because for about a week after that I couldn’t hardly bend my knee to pick up my leg to take a step. I couldn’t completely straighten it either. I was practically dragging the left leg. To me it seemed like the brace was making things worse, so I ditched it. During my next appointment, the doctor implied that I wasn’t doing enough stretching and other exercises to improve flexibility and strengthen the leg, but I maintain that I would have been fine if I hadn’t hurt it further at the gas station. After all, I was spending hours every night on stretching and strengthening exercises.

I was now also going to physical therapy to try to get back the range of motion in my knee. It was the beginning of June and six weeks since the injury and essentially six weeks without running. Before the injury, I had registered to do the Crater Lake Rim Run Marathon in August, but there was no way that that was going to happen in less than two and a half months when my weekly mileage was at zero: another DNS. XMP was out, since I would still be at 0 miles per week by the time the program started with 12 mile long runs. I was starting to get the feeling I would never be able to run again. I set a deadline that I would have to be able to run before the month of June was out if I was going to still attempt training for the Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon: another pre-injury race registration which fortunately wasn’t until mid November. I kept up the PT, stretching, strengthening, biking, and added some long walks to get some time on my legs. I finally strung together a few weeks of not aggravating the injury. With three days before the end of June, I was cleared to start running again!

Running

My first attempt at running was rather depressing; I could barely manage 400 meters. In fact, I had to break it up into 4 X 100 meter segments. It was the slowest track workout of intervals I have ever done. The first week I managed just 11 miles total with a significant portion of that being walking breaks. That was the way most of July went with gradually longer intervals of easy running interspersed with walking and stretching breaks. The biggest problem was the muscles around my knee kept spasming, twitching, and otherwise not cooperating with what I was trying to do. My next deadline goal of 7 miles before the end of July with no walking breaks was reached on the last day of July. My left leg still got tired rather quickly, but it usually wasn’t painful. Strangely enough, the knee had a tendency to bother me more while walking (and with changes in weather) than running. My guess is that the muscles were still a little out of balance. It was time to start marathon training.

Training

Despite canceling Crater Lake from my vacation plans, August was a great month. I got my long run up to 12 miles, and weekly mileage reached 36. I made so much progress that I even decided to register for the Parks Half Marathon coming up on September 12, 2010. The last couple of weeks I even added in some faster 7:30 per mile pace running for a few miles on the track, but I am not quite sure about what pace to attempt for this half. Based on how I felt on the track, I think I could probably handle 7:45 pace fairly easily for 10 miles, but I have some doubt about maintaining that for over 13 miles considering my latest long run was only a little over 14 miles; the last few miles of which were a struggle. I think I will attempt 7:50 per mile pace and hope I can hang on!

Etceteras

What else have I been doing since April? You would think that with the reduction in running I would have had all kinds of free time, but as I mentioned in the opening, major injuries are very distracting. It was even difficult staying focused on my job at work at times. I must admit that I was probably not getting as much done as I normally would have in late April, May and even June. Not sleeping well didn’t help matters, either. I volunteered at a few races on weekends. Otherwise it was just rehab, rehab, and more rehab. I am so glad and relieved to be mostly back to my normal schedule. I have even kept up with the stretching and some extra strengthening exercises. I got the impression that some of my muscles that aren’t involved as much with running were a bit weaker than they should have been before the injury. Perhaps I will come out of this with some improvements in flexibility and strength although it will be a while yet before my endurance is back to PR levels! Hopefully I can stay on my feet and injury free in the future.