The Injury: Part 2

The Unraveling Begins

In February 2008, two weeks after I first "tweaked" my hamstring/hip/glute or whatever it was, I raced a mile at BU at the Valentine Invitational. I had hoped to run 4:45, but having cut back on my training and still feeling discomfort in my right leg, I revised my expectations downward. I went to the meet not knowing whether the injury would flare up in the race, and I remember telling Dan Chebot that I had a "hamstring injury" and wasn't expecting much.

The rest had done me some good, and I was able to warm up and do strides without anything more than a vague sense of discomfort in my right leg. I raced, and the race went pretty well. I started out in last, but ran extremely evenly to pass several people in my heat and finish in 4:50. After the race, my leg felt pretty much the same as it had before, so I figured I was well on the way to being healed. I had no doubt whatsoever that I would be running 6-8 seconds faster in a couple of months when the national masters championships rolled around.

The next day, a Sunday, I went out for what was supposed to be an easy recovery run and felt really uncomfortable. My right leg hurt with every stride. After a few miles, I felt surprisingly fatigued, much more so than the usual post-race dullness. The strangest thing was that I couldn't pinpoint the source of the trouble, I just felt as though my legs weren't working properly.

The third rule of injuries

The third rule of injuries is that after you do the wrong thing for a while, doing the wrong thing becomes a habit. In my case, after that mile race I settled into a routine of uncomfortable and shortened "maintenance" runs, interspersed with weekly attempts to make up for my drastically reduced training volume by doing speed workouts. This is how I rationalized my "training" behavior:

Although my legs felt bad when I started running, they didn't seem to feel much worse when I was running fast. Therefore, I figured, I should make the most of my limited running to get in some quality workouts. That way, I could preserve what fitness I had until I found the right stretch, or the right therapy, to take care of this still mysterious discomfort in my right leg. Maybe the track workouts would actually HELP by making me focus more on my form. I continued to go to the track about once a week, and I struggled through short workouts with a few fast intervals and increasing levels of general fatigue.

On weekends, I had some truly disastrous runs. I remember a long run with my buddies at what should have been a very gentle pace. After 40 minutes running maybe 7:30 miles, I felt like I was in the last stages of a particularly hard race. I was doing everything I could to keep up with my buddies, who were gabbing away with no strain whatsoever. I finally stopped at about 10 miles and walked. I was completely out of gas.

And still, I was unwilling to let go of the idea that I was still training, still trying to get ready for upcoming races.

At the end February, I ran another mile race at the New England Championships at Harvard. I ran 5:00, 10 second slower than my "off" race at BU. And it wasn't easy, either!

The worst thing was that I still didn't know what was going on, and I found it frustrating to try to explain to people I knew in the running world why I was suddenly running so slow. My close training friends knew that I wasn't right, but to more casual acquaintances I was just slow. It didn't help that my woes had begun at almost the same time I had turned 50 and I was starting to deal with the "well, you can't expect to keep racing and training at the same level you did when you were younger" advice.

But I certainly felt old, at least when I ran. I would run one day for four miles, come back feeing lousy and take the next day off. If I did manage to have a decent run, or a decent couple of days, the next time I tried to push the distance or the pace of my runs, I would be back where I started.

Towards the end of February, shortly after that 5:00 mile, I finally decided I needed some help, so I made an appointment with a muscular therapist for a series of massages that I hoped would loosen the hamstrings and make it possible to continue training and racing. I still had not given up on the masters indoor championships, and the spring racing season.