As you may have guessed by the title of this entry, I am (once again) injured.
Sometime two weeks ago, while I was logging some of my fastest and most impressive runs (and over extending myself on a daily basis), I felt a sharp-ish pain in my right leg. Now because I am a persistent stubborn young lady, I ignored the pain and continued to exercise. As before, the pain lessened and then shot through the roof, to the point that one evening I did not get one wink of sleep because my leg was throbbing and the pain was keeping me awake. This time the pain is coming from my right leg (as opposed to the aforementioned left side tibia/knee caps fractures) in the middle of my lower leg, in the calf region. The best way for me to describe this pain is to say that it felt like someone was pulling my calf muscle and the surround skin off the bone and then punching the bone in half. Sounds pretty unpleasant huh? Lucky for me, I have an incredibly high pain tolerance and while that feeling was unpleasant, I knew I could keep running on it. All good runners love running. Their unyielding, undying love is both their greatest strength and their worst downfall. For most of us when we encounter an injury we go through those lovely 5 steps of grief. This model, pioneered by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (a psychiatrist), basically states that everyone goes through 5 stages while dealing with grief. I believe in this model whole-heartedly and recognize these patterns in my own behavior when I am experiencing grief.
So here are the model's 5 stages:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
So in relation to running and injury, this model is absolutely applicable. As you've already seen, I felt the injury come on and denied its existence flat out. I told myself, 'Oh it's just a strain, no biggie, keep running and gut it out.' Then when the injury worsened (due to my stubbornness), I began to get angry about it. I can remember myself saying to my friend Amy, 'It's not fair that I am injured again, I worked so hard and trained so well this time!' I wanted to just punch my leg into oblivion. Then comes the bargaining stage. This part is where I tell my body, 'Listen here's the deal, I get you think you're injured, but I am gonna keep exercising, in slightly different ways so I am still being active and you just heal up real fast so we can do this December race, Okay?' This doesn't work either, in case you were wondering. So the next stage is depression and this one is the hardest and lasts the longest. This stage is where you hit your mental rock bottom regarding whatever you're going through. I get sad and I cry. I walk around for days with an impenetrable cloud around me. I am the least pleasant person to be around, and damn near nothing cheers me up. People will say, it's just running, get over it. Yeah, well, let's remove you from your most cherished activity and see how well you cope. Cope you will indeed, but you need to give yourself time to go through the process. Depending on the injury sometimes this lasts a few days, sometimes weeks. It's always a dark time, but I am telling you this so when this happens to you, you know that you're not alone. Eventually you learn to accept that your injury is for real, you have to deal with it and rest and you have to give yourself time to heal. So the model holds true, but running injuries still suck.
So this time (once I had gotten through the 5 stages and accepted that I was injured) I did a good deal of research to determine whether this was a fracture or shin splints. Both suck (the word suck seems to be recurring a lot in this entry) and require a good deal of healing time, but it's good to know which it is. After about 2 days worth of research, I was able to determine that I actually have a slightly torn soleus muscle. This is the muscle that attaches from your foot to your calf on the inside of your legs. It’s a new one for me, but guess how I did this… BIKING!!! I know, frustrating, but at least I knew what this was and now can proceed to heal it. Right about now you are probably thinking, 'Hey cheap ass, why don't you just go to a real doctor, a qualified medical examiner, and have them take a look and diagnosis this.' Well, smarty-pants, because I have had a slew of leg injuries before, and I know the time off work, cost of doctors visits, X-rays, and MRIs, and inability for them to do ANYTHING for me other than say that one simple (yet HIGHLY annoying) word, rest. So I did research worthy of a scholarly paper and made my decision: 4-6 weeks no running. Wow, someone should pay me 4K to do in 2 days what all those doctors and tests took 3 weeks to do. So the long and short is that rest is good and I will heal.
With that said, it's me and rest will never mean a lack of exercise. I have talked about exercise and rest with many people and this is what most of them (including my mom and many friends) state is the standard: "two days" of rest. My boyfriend says, "at least one day, if not two days" of rest. I say "one to zero rest days." This (also apparently) makes me a bit of a crazy person. My friend Amy tells people that I am crazier than she is (Amy's pretty crazy exercise-wise; she has done a whole bundle of half Ironmans, not to mention other half and full marathons). But what I am learning is that being crazy is okay, but you need balance. Plain speak: You cannot bust your ass on runs everyday for 6 days straight and not get injured. So resting is important. But resting is only half of the battle. The longer you run, the more you get to learn about your body and how it works and processes exercise and physical exertion. You be come accustomed to some (non-fracture/muscle tear-threatening) pain and begin to identify things to tweak in your stride and form. The longer you run, (maybe this one is a duh) the better you get at it. However, improving form and taking rest days will only get you so far. So I am back on the elliptical and weight lifting until I am healed.
Since my injury 3-plus weeks ago, I have been on the spinner machine in the gym, walking, on the elliptical or on my road bike almost every day. I could swim too, but I am not there yet. One step at a time. Sometimes I do yoga at home before I go to bed or when I wake up, but mostly it's some type of cardio. Though I will say that trying out a new sport is tough. During my first bike-ride-to-work-and-home attempt (which overall was amazing and I can’t wait to do it again) I hit a rough patch of road and fell. During this fall I significantly bruised up chunks of the left side of my body and messed up my shoulder. I am fine and am not emotionally scarred, but keep in mind that when you are out of your element you can get still injured. More injured even. Injury can be frustrating and depressing, but you will live to run another day.
Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you have a great day!
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