Our bodies can be (are?) fragile things

Healing from a running injury is a little tougher than I thought

The first time I trained to run a marathon, I was in my twenties, gearing up for the Bermuda Marathon. I was part of a running group that met every Sunday morning for a long run, the first few of which weren’t too challenging. We started with an 8-miler, then added another mile each week.

It didn’t take long, though, before we were getting into some challenging distances, and soon we were looking forward to 13-, 14- and 15-mile long runs every weekend. All of a sudden, those miles were starting to add up quickly.

All that time on our feet, spread across a group of about 20 of us, and the odds are that someone’s going to experience a running injury, sooner or later. A shin splint, some knee pain, Achilles tendinitis — you name it, before long quite a few of us were experiencing one or more of them.

Getting hurt meant you couldn’t get in your long run — and, you missed out on the experience of running with the group that weekend. You missed out on catching up, hanging out, and getting to know the other runners a little better. And, the longer you stayed out, the more catch-up work you felt you had to do to get back to the same level of training where everyone else was.

Thankfully, I didn’t get hurt at all. But again, I was in my twenties, when my body was like an Apple product — you take it out of the box and plug it in, and everything just “works.” I never worried about injury, because I was indestructible… right?

Fast-forward quite a few years (decades, even) and… I’m not so indestructible after all. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, when I shared with you that I’ve been experiencing plantar fasciitis, well, I’m still feeling it. It’s not so much pain that I can’t walk — and I’ve just picked up a new pair of running shoes, with much better arch support, so I’m giving that a chance to work.

But it’s enough pain to remind me that, maybe my body isn’t like an Apple product anymore. It’s not going to just “work” like it used to, and bounce back from minor setbacks quite as quickly as it once did. And that’s… a fact that is taking me some time to adjust to.

I’m doing a lot of this 👆 lately

I know what I’m experiencing doesn’t exactly qualify as great tragedy (!) and that I’ll heal in time. Still, it’s a reminder that I’m human after all, and of how finite my abilities really are. I’d love to imagine that my potential is limitless — wouldn’t we all? — but all it’s taken is a narrow band of tissue at the bottom of my right heel to remind me it isn’t.

Amby Burfoot, the winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and a longtime editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine, has some great advice for anyone who’s hurt and longing to get back to running sooner than they really should in his 2018 book Run Forever: don’t catastrophize, come back slowly, and take pauses to rehabilitate:

“Runners are so disciplined and determined (and maybe a bit control-freaky) that we too often despair when we get injured. We torment ourselves with worry that the injury will cause us to lose everything — all the training, all the goals, all the commitments to join others on race day. This rarely happens.

Injuries force us to reevaluate and improvise a bit. We need to stay flexible. No, we’re not going to be able to do every long run on the sixteen-week training schedule. But yes, there’s still time to recover and run strong.

Don’t panic. You didn’t just lose your best friend, or learn that you had a rapidly spreading cancer. You lost five days of training due to a sprained ankle. In all likelihood you’ll be back on the roads in almost no time at all.”

For my sake, I hope Amby’s right! 😃

When I take a moment to think about it, images play back in my mind of all those years ago, of fellow runners who had to pull out of our long run training — sometimes in the middle of a run — because they were hurt. I wonder to myself, did I feel compassion for them then? Did I show empathy, and try to help?

Did I understand what they were going through then? I don’t know, to be honest… but I understand now! That’s for sure.

I hope you’ve had a great, great week so far and you’ve gotten some great running in — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell

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Run with us in Eugene this April

In case you missed it, we’re getting together in person to run the Eugene Half Marathon in Eugene, Oregon, this April — here’s all the info on the race, and here’s where you can sign up.

If you missed the training plan for the race I sent out a couple of weeks ago, here’s this week’s miles:

• Thursday, Feb. 1 — 3-4 miles

• Saturday, Feb. 2 — 5 miles

• Sunday, Feb. 3 — 3 miles

• Tuesday, Feb. 5 — 4 miles

Hopefully, my heel pain will subside and I’ll be on this plan very soon — I’ll be there in Eugene, walking or running 🏃🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️