Injury Hell
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I had high hopes for our second planned marathon, the 2003 Napa Valley Marathon, after self-destructing at the 2002 BSIM. And our early training in late-2002 seemed to bear out that optimism. Though we really hadn't come up with a "plan", we increased our mileage quickly, and added some speed training. On sequential weeks, we increased our long run distance from 6 to 8 to 10 to 12 miles. After the 10-mile run, I felt as if I hadn't gotten a good calf stretch, and suffered from some mild, but nagging soreness over the next week. Next Sunday rolled around, and we had a 12-miler planned. Robert was in town, and juiced to run with us. Though I thought twice about it, in the end I decided to run. Quickly, the left calf became tight and somewhat painful. I thought about stopping after 3 miles, but ran through the pain, which faded into a dull throb throughout the run. By the time I returned home, I knew something was very wrong. My lower foot swelled considerably and painfully, and my calf was obviously injured. Later that day, blood began to pool visibly around my ankle, as if I had sprained it. I had no idea what was going on until a doctor diagnosed my trouble as a torn gastrocnemius muscle.
Aside from the black-and-blue leftovers around my left ankle, my gastroc tear left me limping around in pain for about a week. It was two weeks before I could even entertain the thought of jogging lightly. Put simply, our plans for the 2003 NVM were history. The rehab proved to be incredibly frustrating, and more time-consuming than I would've imagined. The pain stayed in the background for months, and left me perpetually afraid to increase my distance or speed. We never could get a running program started, and things like my 2-week jaunt to Norway and France didn't help the consistency.
Finally, in the summer of 2003 we decided to have another go at the marathon thing, the 2003 California International Marathon, billed as the "fastest course in the west". With only a few months to train, we'd be pushing it to prepare for the early-December race date, but we had confidence. We increased our mileage conservatively at first, never straying beyond a 5.5-mile limit. One fateful Sunday, however, Kim wanted to up our long run mileage to 8.5 miles. I resisted, but let valor get the better of reason and went along. Sadly, by the end of the run, Kim's left calf showed similar symptoms of my gastroc tear. Doh! Luckily her injury was not as severe as mine, and although we would not make the CIM, we were able to start running again by October.
Well, here we are...February 9, 2004, less than a month to the 2004 Napa Valley
Marathon. We've got our hotel room, we've just completed the longest run of
our training program, a 22-miler. Gods willing, all systems are go for March
7, 2004. How have we kept injury-free? First, and foremost, we were far more
disciplined with our mileage increases. With long runs of less than 10 miles,
we increased only one mile per week. After that, two miles per week. I
started fastidiously charting our running progress
with my MS Excel spreadsheet.
While the spreadsheet may seem overly geeky to many (myself included), it does
help quantify exactly how far we ran, how fast we ran, and how much we've
increased from previous weeks. The second reason I think we've stayed healthy
is our icing regimen. Following in the footsteps of Paula Radcliffe, we stand
in an ice bath for 10 minutes after each run. Kim is able to immerse her
sometimes-painful knees, and I can quickly chill my calves, which gives me
at least a calming placebo effect of feeling that I will not repeat my earlier
gastroc tear.
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Department of Geophysics Stanford University |
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