Can't learn to stand up if I never fall down

Without sounding like too much of a downer, yesterday was a tough day for me.

It was the Bergen 5K, a race that has produced a personal record for me the two times that I've raced it.  Naturally, I expected big things this year, and training was going well until about three weeks ago.  I stretched one day, slipped into an awkward position, and felt something almost shift in my lower back, upper leg area.  Nothing felt wrong for the next few runs, until my long run two days later.  On a planned 20-22 miler, I made it about 15 miles before I felt an awful pain in the same area.  I limped the last three miles home and tried to rest the rest of the day.   The next morning, I was still in pain, so I ran a few miles and biked.  The rest of the week, I (stubbornly) tried to keep training, some biking, some running, mostly on the treadmill with a softer surface and no turns.  I still decided to race the Karknocker 5K that Friday night.

I ran the warm-up with Joe, and my gait was noticeably different.  Still, I decided to press on and ran the race.  It was like putting a V8 engine in a Chevy Lumina with a flat tire; all of the power is going to be wasted trying to overcome the imbalance, and it just doesn't work.  I finished with a 16:42.  Not awful, but far from what I expected.  However, after the race, I could barely walk.  I was officially injured.

I don't do injury well.  The last time I was seriously injured that I had to take significant time off was in 2009, and my attempts at coming back put me into a cycle of overtraining, illness, and poor race results that lasted well over a year.  Although I'm five years older and allegedly five years smarter, I can't help to wonder if I'll slip up and do the same thing again.  After the Karknocker, I took the next few of days off running and just biked, and I started running again in the middle of the following week with little pain. Alas, I may have ramped mileage back up a little too quickly, and by the following Sunday, I could barely run again without limping.  I (once again stubbornly) ran a little bit each day while biking a lot, pain-free, during the following few days.  Which led me to Thursday, two days before Bergen, and the pain was not getting any better.  I didn't run, Josh assured me the team would be fine without me, and I had the intention of running at most a tempo at Bergen.

Turns out, that didn't happen.  After a couple days of not running, I ran the warm-up with the team, felt okay but not great, and decided to not race.  With the caliber of the field at Bergen, I would be too tempted to not tempo and go hard and make my injury even worse.  It took every bit of mental willpower to prevent me from pinning on a bib and lining up for the race.  It was tough to stand near the finish line as 25 men ran sub-16 minutes in the race, with another two men and a woman right near the 16 minute mark.  That being said, I was still glad to be there to support my team. I ran the cooldown with the team and still felt okay. Although there may have been the potential that I could have been Number 26, setting my recovery back another few days or longer for that attempt would not be worth it.

Recently, Nick Symmonds and Reid Coolsaet have written about their injuries.  It isn't that I didn't know that elites get injured too, but their posts came at the right time to keep me going.  Maybe a brief "retirement" from running, although I'm far from being a professional, isn't so bad.  Even though I haven't stopped running altogether, I've been able to readjust my focus to other things in the last few weeks: reading a bit more, studying a little bit more, but also generally taking time to rest and "do nothing".  This is hard for me, as I'm a person who always tries to be busy doing something, but rest just needs to happen sometimes.  Although the body may not be ready, that gumption to run is still there.  My injury is not severe, but it still will need time to heal.  Reid's post title sums it up nicely: I'm down, but I'm not defeated.

So what's next?  The original plan was to build up and race the Wineglass Marathon...in 8 weeks from now.  The new plan is to get healthy and running normally again.  If that includes running the marathon, then that's great. I have three weeks to assess before the deferral deadline; if I don't feel capable, I'll know my Fall 2015 marathon plans. At this point, it's more sore than painful and my gait is normal again, but a doctor's visit may finally be in order if those conditions change for the worse again.  In any case, it's almost cross-country season, which makes being healthy soon more worthwhile!