This is the way the [season]
ends,
Not with a bang, but a
whimper.
Part of the reason I love the marathon is the way the season
builds towards it; the biggest and most important race; the peak waiting for
you to summit after a mountain of long runs, tempo workouts, and track
intervals. Race day is a celebration, a culmination of months and years
of hard work, a big bang to end the season.
But this season won’t end with a bang. No, instead all
you’ll hear from me is a whimper, because I’m officially out of the race. I can’t
run two steps, let alone 26 miles.
Here’s the story of the most drastic taper ever, from gunning
for a PR to settling for a DNS*:
A week and a half ago, I did my last hard workout of the
season. I didn’t hit the pace I wanted, but with help from the ever amazing GRC guys, I stuck it
out. I didn’t feel anything (except maybe anger at DC’s relentless humidity). No
unusual pain.
And with that workout in the books, the taper began. But so
did all the trouble.
That night I was more sore than usual, but it was a hard
workout, so perhaps that wasn’t so surprising. If anything, the soreness
reminded me that a workout at a slower pace than expected in searing humidity
is still a tough workout. The next day (Sunday) I went for my normal
post-long-run recovery jog. I was tight, but didn’t think twice about it. In
fact, by the end, I had put the previous day’s disappointing pace behind me and
was back to dreaming of PRs at Grandma’s. But by that evening, I was as
sore as I am after a marathon. What was worrisome was that it seemed worse in
one leg, my right quad. This might not
just be lingering soreness.
I took the next day off. The taper was starting, so the
schedule had an easy run anyway. No big deal to skip.
Tuesday I tried to go for a run. I felt okay at first, and
made it a few miles. But it gradually got worse, until I gave up and walked
home. The Oh-Crap-I-Might-Be-Injured-So-I-Better-Walk Walk is a miserable
experience. First of all, it takes forever to walk the few miles you just
jogged in seemingly no time. Second, your thoughts are a scattered mess of
freaking out, denial, guilt, and berating yourself. Maybe I’m being a baby giving up on this. Maybe I should run again,
this walking is taking forever. Maybe I can’t run again. Maybe the marathon is
out of the picture. What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong, when did I cross
the line? I remember thinking that I would take it easy again that day so I
could recover before a hard track session the next day. But by the
time I finally got home, I had come to accept the track session
probably wouldn’t happen.
But even over that long walk, I hadn’t yet accepted—or considered beyond that fleeting thought—that the marathon wouldn’t. I emailed my physical therapist
and he immediately responded that he could see me if I came in right away. So I
headed straight off to see him, without preparing myself for what might
be coming. Surely he'll just massage this away.
He listened to my symptoms (incredible soreness in my right
quad, just above the knee, pain when running and going up and down stairs) and suspected
it was a stress reaction in my femur. (Trouble in the bone might be causing the
surrounding muscles to spasm.) But he tried to remain positive; it might not be
an issue with the femur, and if it was anything muscular we could rehab it and
run the marathon on schedule. I was to take the next two days off from running
and get back to him if the soreness didn’t subside.
It didn’t. On Friday I saw another doctor to get a referral
for an MRI the following Tuesday. As my constantly fidgety self was strapped
into the MRI scanner, hating every claustrophobic minute, my worries started to
snowball: what if this was something worse than expected, a full-blown fracture
or some other unknown problem? Over the previous week, I had come to accept the serious
possibility of missing this marathon. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, so long
as I can run the next one. Now I worried about that.
On Wednesday, the MRI results came back: I have a stress
reaction in my femur. No marathon, no more PRs this season, no running at all
for 4-6 weeks.
It’s bad news, yes, but it's not the worst news. There are always silver linings, so
let’s focus on those:
1. It’s a stress reaction,
not a fracture. A reaction is the precursor to a fracture (which would mean
being on crutches and out for much longer). We caught it in time, and I was
smart to walk home those depressing few miles, so let this be a reminder to all
you runners: LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. When you’re hurt, you’re hurt. Don’t do any
more damage.
2. My doctors have been amazingly helpful and completely
understanding of my commitment to running. They didn’t have the knee-jerk
reaction of other doctors I’ve had who have said, “Well, you run too much. Stop
doing that.” No, they worked with me to get a diagnosis as quickly as possible
and are doing whatever they can to get me healthy for the big race next February.
3. It’s going to be hard to let go of the goals I had for
this season and the time I wanted to hit before the Trials, but this race was
always sort of a freebie; I have my qualifier and that’s all I need. (Thank you, God, for letting me get that out
of the way last December!) Now that I’ve done nearly all the work (just
that last 26.2 remaining…) it doesn’t feel so free, but I’m reminding myself
that I’ll be stronger next season from the months of hard work I put in this season;
that won’t just disappear.
4. Obviously getting injured less than three weeks from your
marathon is not ideal. Injury is never ideal. But Big Picture, the timing is
actually kinda, sorta… good. I was going to take my end of season break anyway,
and that would be followed with a few weeks of easy running. That post-season
recovery time will now be co-opted as femur recovery time, but it will look
pretty similar. I’ll be running in the pool instead of on the ground, but if
there was a time to have to take it easy, this is a pretty good one.
5. This is not a silver lining, but a lesson in perspective:
the week I realized I might be injured got many orders of magnitude worse when
we got the news that our dear teammate, Nina, had died. I can whine about
injuries, humidity, or poor races, but in the end I am incredibly
lucky to run and luckier still to know the people I’ve met along the
way. As I said in my post about Nina, running has given me some of my
best friends—for example, friends that understand how terrible injuries are, yet simultaneously
make them seem less terrible. This injury isn’t so bad in the grand scheme of
things; now the focus is getting healthy for the Trials, so I can bring my two
dear running friends, Lauren and Nina, to LA with me.
Dream big,
Teal
*DNS = Did Not Start. I’ve been fortunate to have not used
that phrase here… until now.
