Giving Thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neM-PuW3_jY



This Ohio cross country runner is amazing! I hope the clip above works--it shows her nearly at the finish line, when her left leg breaks in three places, and, rather than forfeit the race, she literally crawls nearly 50 feet to the finish line! Amazing. She ran fast enough earlier in the race that she only came a few seconds slower than her PR--even w/ crawling that far to the finish.

I am so thankful for people like her, real people who are so inspiring, and to show me that I don't have it so bad with my little bone stress.

Happy, wonderful holidays all!!!

Like brother like sister

My brother has had stress fracture like symptoms same time as me--lucky for him he is an amazing tri-athlete so he doesn't mind focusing on swimming and biking. I just love the running. This is a photo of us racing last July for the fourth of july race in Berkley. He can go much faster than me but stayed w/ me as we did this more for bonding than for competition. Notice our stride-- same. We both supinate. And we both have similar muscles. We actually sprained our ankles the same day in two different countries: I fell down a flight of stair in October 1994 and he was training for Race for the Cure in Boston- same exact day and we both sprained our left ankle same time. Odd huh? Well, he started w/ same type thigh/hip flexor pain as me same time a month or so ago. So, like the good doctor he is, instead of seeing his own ortho, he just asked me what my ortho found in the bone scan and determined that was good for him. My doc told me I could do "active rest": weightless workouts. My brother took that as something he could do too for rehab since his symptoms were so similar, and he's been swimming and biking.

Well my recovery has been slower than anticipated and I just started the pool running on Tuesday. I LOVED IT!!! Oh my-- I had to talk my physical therapist into it but it was sooo fun. They put this weightless belt on you and your arms pump above the water while your legs pump below. Oh my-- it was the closest I have come to running in sooo long I can no longer keep track. I just kept going from on side of the short pool to the next and she finally told me they were closing the pool (I was over my session by 30 min). Well next day went to my land physical therapist.
So, here's my stats:

warmth on hip flexer (hurting me more than femur now): 10 minutes
weights: 7 pounds 3 reps 12 per rep for 5 exercises just injured leg
I talked him into treadmill by brining my running shoes
2 minutes at 4 miles per hour
5 at 4.5 (average)
2 at 4 miles

My physical therapist was literally at my elbow the whole time telling me I had to tell him if it hurt. Well, it ached more than hurt, and it was mostly in my hip flexor-- he seems much more happy about hip flexor than femur fracture so he said okay.

I cannot wait to water run again!!
by the way, getting fatter than a thanksgiving stuff turkey w/ all this non-running. Wow, it's just not the same fitting into my size 0 bathing suit in a size 6 body--- yuck!!!!!! Must diet hard core while I'm not out there burning 1500 calories per run.

Thanks so much to my fellow runners w/ kind words of encouragement.
I'm going to admit, though, that stubborn runs in my family. Just like my brother still plans to race his triatholon, I still plan to do my half marathon in January. I will start slow, first w/ lots of water running then land running--even if I have to start at 2 miles and work my way up to 10 before the half.
Have wonderful holidays everyone!
Sincerely,
Keeping dream alive runner!!!

Dead runner walking

Attended the Scriptor newspaper fundraiser on crutches--colleagues laughed at me while I kept crowd control with the crutches. Photo is of me and Ben Harwood, adviser for Seaholm's newspaper. We raised almost $4000 that night for our newspaper and Harmonize for Hope.

I started walking without the crutches this weekend and my leg hurts. I am so upset. The physical therapist said that I would be training again by Nov. 20 but I had to stay on the crutches. It's just so darned hard, esp. when I can walk w/out them and it takes a day or so to make the pain come back. I'm getting truly worried. Not that I have been good about rehab. I've been on deadline week which kills every thing else in my life--so I missed wed and friday physical therapy with Ken and all week of water running. Arrrggg. I was looking back at my training log for this particular marathon and realized that it took me a while just to get up to 3 miles!!! So, let's see, today is Nov.11 and I have not run since the Detroit Free Press relay marathon. That would be about 3 weeks no running. Enough for my earlier training to die. Last night I saw the Electric Six at St. Andrews. I talked to one of the singers for an opening band and he said, "we are all dead bands, here tonight." I asked him what he meant, and he said "Still playing but not going anywhere anymore."
Ah, I said, "Dead band walking."
So, as I lay here having had little to no cardio in weeks much less running, I feel like dead runner walking. It sucks big time. And I am so busy, it's just a pain to use the crutches-- having hands to do things other than lift your body from place to place really does save time.

I wonder if I'll have to push back my retraining date. Coach Kyle said he would have a new/improved schedule for my now half-marathon by Nov. 22, but I wonder if he'll have to change that again.
If I start training in earnest December 1st I will only have 4 weeks before taper. Can I get up to 10 miles injury free in that time?

Here comes the pool . . .

Bone scan results:
I got the scan done on Sunday, and I asked the technician what the results were. My brother is an OBGYN and my sister-in-law, his wife, is a nurse, so I know better, but I did the following anyway: I threatened her into to telling me the results when she said she was not allowed to.

After the second scan was done, I told her I planned to run a good 10 Miles that day. She advised me not to, and I told her I would assume that all was good and I could continue running unless she told me what the results were.

She sighed and said, "The doctor looked at the images and said it looks like you have shin splints except they are in your femur bone. DON'T run 10 miles today."
"So it's not a fracture?"
"I'm just telling you what the doctor said. Your femur looks like it has shin splints."
Huh? Okay, so is this worse news? better news? I assumed better but I anxiously called my orthepedic Sunday (I guess they don't consider my bone scan emergency enough to page the doctor on a weekend--the nerve:) then I called him a few times on Monday. Finally got a call while grading papers, not by the doctor, but by someone who works in his office. She read the results and explained that I had "a stress reaction in my femur". I asked if that had anything to do with shin splints and she said they were similar. I guess, basically, I have a weakening of the outer layer of my femure bone-- a pre fracture condition. I started physical therapy yesterday--had some ultra sound done to my thigh and some manipulation tests where the therapist twisted, pushed, and pulled on my right leg and gauged by my reactions where and how bad my injury was. I'm pretty expressive so it was an easy test for him. He determined that it was more bone stress than soft tissue (muscle, etc.) because when he pulled by right foot towards him and asked me to resist I "expressed" the pain I felt. He said that the test had put pressure on my femur and the muscles in the back of my leg. Since I felt pain on the top of my thigh, he said that just flexing caused my femur to react and that I should put no weight on it all and maybe wait for pool running until, earliest, this Saturday and maybe not then cause I would have to use my muscles which would put strain on the femur.
So, he said to be an angel today and tom (angel meaning absolutely no weight--darn it, already broke that rule-- crutches are just so annoying) and he would see when I can start pool running.

Well, I already contacted another physical therapist to do some pool running starting next week for 3 days a week :) SO, I'll really try to stay off of my right leg entirely for at least the rest of today and tom, get more ultrasound and then start my pool running next Monday.

I really prayed that this was NOT a stress fracture, and I am thankful that it isn't.
Perhaps this is fate helping me learn how to cross train and become an even more effecient, stronger runner.
I also had to give up my marathon dream. I will now be running only a half marathon in Arizona. ARRGG-- I'm slowly coming to grips that this year will not be the year I run my first marathon. It's so hard, though, when you dream of this for months, work at it nearly every day, get better each run, feel good, and then just before you start really getting into some PR's you realize you have to let go of everything you psyched yourself up for. I am known to be stubborn and I'm even stubborn w/ myself. I can't help sort of beating myself up for not being smarter about my training. I really wish I could find a sports doctor who could analyze what I did to cause this. I gave Dr. Jurist all my theories but he said I was over analyzing that this just happens to runners. From what I've read, though, it doesn't just happen. It's usually the wrong shoes resulting in improper biomechanics while running or not enough strengthening of oposing muscles or following a training schedule that adds too many miles too soon, etc. I just want to know how I can prevent this from happening again after I recover and I can't do that if I can't figure out what I did wrong this time.

Okay, off to grade.