Mile 6 - The ART of Running

In the "warm up," I claimed I would "have regular contributions from marathon correspondents of all levels." You'll notice the writing is better and more to the point in these miles. Enjoy! 


This is Dan Seidel. He moonlights as a Russell Crowe look-a-like. 

Dan Seidel's Personal Bests Include: 15:40 5K, 33:33 10k, 1:12:48 Half Marathon

Below is Dan's Mile 6 "The ART of Running."


An injured runner is a danger not only to himself but to others. Friends, family, and lovers alike will feel his wrath. Like a bird flying into a window, he will try to escape his predicament by doing precisely what he shouldn’t do: continuing to run, against all self-interest and common sense. Eventually, once he has passed through the stages of denial, rage, and acceptance, he may turn to beer.

Beer

It is at this point, when all else has failed and much money has been wasted on doctors, masseuses, chiropractors, and other nostrums, that the hobbled runner may finally be ready to throw himself at the mercy of ART — active release technique, a specific combination of deep-tissue massage and movement.

Let me state my thesis boldly and clearly: ART is the most effective and quickest treatment for soft-tissue injuries caused by overuse. It is shocking to me that most distance runners have never heard of it, or wait so long until they try it, because most running injuries fall into this category. ART will not instantly heal a stress fracture; it cannot work miracles, and it doesn’t promise to. What it does address — by direct, painful pressure that will make you grit your teeth when done properly — are muscle strains, tendonitis, neuromas, plantar fasciitis, nerve impingement, and other degradations of soft tissue.

My conversion to ART came about six weeks ago. In May, I had been doing some strides on the track and my left knee buckled. Naturally I assumed I had tweaked my knee. It turned out, though, that my hamstring had given out. A nasty case of tendonitis ensued that I couldn’t shake for two months — not with rest, ice, massage, laser therapy, ultrasound, Advil, yoga, or positive thinking. I became a miserable son of a bitch, particularly since I’d just moved out to California and every day I was taunted by perfect running weather. When I started coaching high school cross country in July, I was whining about my injury to the head coach, who quickly cut me off and basically told me to shut the fuck up and go see a guy named Brian, a triathlete and ART specialist.  http://massageworx.blogspot.com/

Brian’s waiting room offered about fifteen magazines, all of them related to cycling or triathlons. A bookshelf held an impressive number of sports performance books, among which were sprinkled in works of Eastern philosophy and New Agey–themed titles. I could hear Enya softly cooing from one of the back rooms. I started squirming in my seat. But then out came Brian. I had never met a more energetic human being. The energy was not constant but erupted in intermittent spasms of laughter or just excess movement, as though he were being shocked by some remote, unseen force. He had a bottle of lotion holstered to his belt like a pistol, and without looking he would periodically squirt a small dollop into his hands and start leveraging all his considerable strength — he’d been a bodybuilder at one point in his life — into different tendons and muscles of the hamstring as he moved my leg in an arc and maintained a rapid-fire monologue involving the intricacies of the leg’s anatomy, with abbreviated anatomical Latin used as casually as a native tongue.

Now let me skip ahead for a moment, although Brian deserves his own magazine profile. I got better, and I got better quickly. A handful of sessions were enough to get me back running four or five days a week, and within a couple weeks of running and building back strength I was able to do workouts again. As a bonus, during a follow-up session with Brian he took a crack at a neuroma in my foot that had been bothering me for three years, and which forced me to wear an expensive set of custom orthotics and cost me more money than I’m willing to admit. A week ago I ditched the orthotics and my foot feels fine.

Picture of Dan Feeling Fine

All the usual caveats apply here — every person is different, everybody responds differently to treatment, not every injury will respond quickly to ART, you’ve got to find the right practitioner with the right experience, etc. But frankly, after years of pussyfooting around with conservative R.I.C.E. and with what Brian dismissively calls the “allopathy” (in a word, pill-popping) espoused by most doctors, I’ve got little patience for caveats. Just get me out the door and running, and I don’t care how much the therapy hurts or how exactly it is that it breaks up the hypoxic scar tissue so effectively. I’m sure all hobbled marathon hopefuls will agree.

Mile 5

The price of getting healthy again? Not priceless. $89 at Whole Foods. Hamner's slew of vitamins and Traumeel.

So you have to rub the Truameel on your leg twice a day. Take the Vitamin C, the Simply One for Men, the chewable Vitamin D, Magnesium, and the Zinc once a day. Pheidippides didn't have to do this, but I guess he didn't have Whole Foods either. 

I'm also plunging into cross-training, but this is a discipline I've yet to excel at. I've never been good at pill-popping either. Here's a video of me going for the plunge, (featuring a very healthy right leg from a year ago) which I hope to make a routine part of my cross-training. I have yet to set up a rope swing to practice this in the Hudson River. Stay tuned. I might get a bright idea

Video courtesy of Ben Foley, co-founder of Organization for Visual Progression, (http://www.crowdrise.com/VisualMediaAdvocacyProject)

In the meantime, I'll also be looking for other forms of treatment and Mile 6 will be all about that. Should be interesting...

Mile 4

"Failed opportunity to name something you do "Demolition Derby" - Dan Maher


I'm still wrestling with this leg. I also had a failed attempt over the weekend to actually become superhuman, which involved a nacho recipe that got out of control.

Photo courtesy of Isaac Paul

This isn't an actual rendering from this past weekend, but a photo of successful nachos from months before. What does this have to do with running? I won't get too much into the wrong sort of details but the nachos only resulted in drinking and thinking more about this leg.

Anyway, I meet Doctor Hamner.

(http://www.drdansportsmd.com/drDan.html#top)

I need a true medical opinion about what's going on so Marathon Derby avoids becoming a lot of puns on my last name and nacho nights. Hamner is my kind of doctor. You can see it. He looks like he's been struck by lightning, traveled through time, and is kind of amazed we exist at all. He's just running with it.


(He advocates the Caveman workout, which is an easy way to see how training is done where he came from. The video link for this on his website under "Media," which is really worth it if you have some time and goes a long way to explaining a few things.) http://www.drdansportsmd.com/drDan.html#top)


Anyway, Hamner is the chosen prophet of a true medical opinion. I need him to tell me why my leg feels like it got hit with more than a few practice swings of a baseball bat. I tell Hamner about the race and the pain. He's looking at my leg and twisting and turning as we're talking about Tucson, AZ. I went to grad school there and found some great friends, running, and then left to come to New York, and I miss Tucson.


"Ummhhh, yeah we need to do that again," he says, "you got me daydreaming about the '70s."


He takes a foot and turns it to the right and left to test my range of motion. He pushes my leg back and over to the side. Yes, both legs flex. No sacrifice of limbs to the Marathon yet. Then it starts to occur to me that wherever Dr. Hamner may have learned about medicine, this table could have been a sacrificial altar. I feel like I'm being prepared. That and the contributing feeling of anyone touching the sensitive spot on my right leg makes me want to bolt out of the room. But bolting is not really in the cards right now. Hamner has begun "Mmmhhhing" and "uhhuhhing" in a very professional tone, which settles me down and impresses me. Do they teach that to doctors?


"Got something there. Don't I? And how many miles a week were you doing, buddy?"


"I was in the middle of an 80-mile week."


"Mmmhhh," he says.


Now, Hamner is the kind of guy who is just that interesting. I remember, suddenly, a story Jerry Macari, the owner of Urban Athletics, told me about Hamner from when he had a heart operation done. One morning, Hamner was sitting outside the story when Jerry arrived for work. Hamner stood up, pulled up his shirt displaying massive scars around his heart, turned around, and walked away playing the harmonica. Hamner snaps me out of this thought process.


"Yeah, Jerry, your boss and I go way back. He's a good friend."


To make this quick Hamner puts me through a battery of tests and treatments. I walk, only to discover my left leg is compensating for my right leg. I can barely jump on my right leg without falling over. I hear another "MMHHH" after this test. Then I'm back on the sacrificial altar getting painful deep-tissue massage, an ultrasound (I'm not pregnant), some laser treatment (not as painful as it sounds), a stim or electrical stimulation (a massive pulsing vibration which feels almost like someone putting a quarter in a vibrating bed), and then he puts me in the hyperbaric chamber.

Hyperbaric Chamber

We don't sell these at Urban Athletics . . . yet. Maybe it will come in our Winter line. I've included a description by the American Cancer Society of what a hyberbaric chamber does.  (You can skip that, though, because it just makes you feel high and removes the social filter which stops you from saying whatever comes to mind.)

The patient lies on a padded table that slides into the tube. The chamber is gradually pressurized with pure oxygen. Patients are asked to relax and breathe normally during treatment. Chamber pressures typically rise to 2.5 times the normal atmospheric pressure. Patients may experience ear popping or mild discomfort, which usually disappears if the pressure is lowered a bit. At the end of the session, which can last from thirty minutes to two hours, technicians slowly depressurize the chamber.

"MMHHH," and after I get out of this the hyperbaric chamber I'm Buddha. Right with the world and completely at peach, I mean peace. Before I leave, Hamner gives me the medical oppinion I've been seeking.

"You're not totally screwed here, buddy."

He tells me that I need to reduce my mileage by at least half and begin cross-training. This is the last known picure of me cross-training. That's me in front.

Sean and Peter Derby cross-training circa 1985

Hamner suggests a slew of vitamins and an analgesic cream, Traumeel, to mask the pain, because as it turns out my muscolskeletal system has endured quite a bit of stress. (http://www.traumeel.com/).


"I'm pretty sure your tibialis tearing away from your bone . . . uhuhh . . but since I can’t get an MRI there’s no way of telling for sure. You may also have a stress fracture."

I’m not going to get into the reasons why I can’t get an MRI except to say that after the hyperbaric chamber, I crave those nachos pictured above and remember what I said about the social filter? Well, after Hamner told me to slid down in that enormous plastic tube and the wooshing sound, the sound of oxygen filling the chamber, filled your ears and your lungs, you accept whatever it is that’s happened. Mostly because you have to. I mean, you’re zipped into an enclosed chamber. So as Hamner is telling me all this I say, “My mom’s prayers are my health insurance.”

Hamner gives me this look, and yeah you've seen it before, so imagine this but he's inspecting me through a pair of square framed hot-green eyeglasses that match his hot-green pants.

"You’re interesting, buddy," he says. "See me next week. And stick to the cross-training. Also only run on the bridle path in Central Park and cross-train. Oh yeah, and run in a soft training shoe like the Nike Vomero. You can probably pick those up at the store you work at, buddy."

Nike Zoom Vomero. Retail $130

In Mile 5, I will be cross-training and looking for new forms of tending to my injury. You may even see me towing my brother Sean through Central Park in a Red Radio Flyer Wagon in my Nike Zoom Vomero, which I purchased at Urban Athletics.

Any ideas on how to recreate these training outfits from 1985?

Mile 3

I have two friends, Laura and Austin, also training for the marathon, who wear Icy Hot to work to ease their daily leg pains. Stepping into the elevator at the investment firm, they find coworkers' heads turned. Then comes the audible sniffing, as if someone had let loose a strange inappropriate peppermint odor. This is not good elevator etiquette, but even when a runner isn't dressed as a runner, even on the job or at home, there is still one focus. Injuries make one do very unusual things.

http://www.thestick.com/

These people, and you know who they are if you're paying attention at all, focused on training sit in office chairs with a tennis ball under a sore hamstring, keep "the stick" on their shelf to roll out their muscles every hour or so, and then there is wearing compression tights, or my beloved compression socks, underneath one's pants. 


Yeah, all this gets a little weird after a while, and so generally I just don't say anything. If the people back in that elevator had any idea that Icy Hot was just the tip of the iceberg, well.


I had been thinking about all this as I waited to see if I could get in to see a sports doctor, a specialist in the field of running and elite marathon training, Dr. Dan Hamner. It's strange but a lot of runners have alter egos. I'm not saying we're superheros. There are a few similiarities. For example, I want to run "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerfull(y) than a locomotive, and (be) able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," but I'll settle for faster than I did last time.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Macari

In this process marathon runners do have to save their own bodies and sometimes this requires special hydration mixes for hydration, extra sleep, extraordinary discipline, and risk. And it's true I wish I were superhuman.

Even those guys had their problems. Achilles had his heel. Superman had his Kryptonite, David had his Goliath. David Beckham had his achilles.


 Brad Pitt was Achilles. 

Photo of Carl Dambkowski as Brad Pitt's stunt double. 

Joan had her Arc.

(French marathoner not to be confused with Joan Benoit Samuelson)

And Pheidippides, the Greek messenger who first made up this whole business back in 490 B.C., dropped dead.

Pheidippides

(O.K. so the historical, classical, comic book, and religious figures are a little mixed up). Also it looks like, the Greeks pre-dated the whole barefoot running movement.


What do I have? I have the ING Philadelphia Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon coming up and unknown injury. Mile 4 I will be seeing Dr. Hamner.


So if you're smelling Icy Hot in the elevator, be very careful. You're probably around someone who is trying to defy pain and weakness. Someone you might have worked with and known for sometime, but underneath they have a marathon to run.

Mile 2

I imagined I looked something like a hobbling ballerina to him. He still opened the doors, without muttering a word. In a different context, I would have told him, "Now, listen, these are graduated compression socks, high-grade stuff, designed to improve blood flow back to the heart. And who doesn't like that? No seriously, just for a minute here, Albert (my doorman), consider the moisture management and temperature regulation, the Achilles tendon support, and the padded foot soles that prevent irritation. This is serious stuff, and I'll sell them to you off my feet for $30, after my run, for a song, really, for the $60 value and they're worth every penny of that and you can pick them up at Urban Athletics." (http://zootsports.com/spring2010/product/m-compressrx-sock?category=mens%3Acompression)

It was a day of firsts. It was the first time I put these on and headed out the door to meet JR, my friend and teammate from Central Park Track Club, for a morning run. It was the first day in my marathon training that I woke up, stepped out of bed, and my right leg felt on fire, as if it were still in the middle of my 5K effort from the night before. It was the first day I had officially freaked out the doorman.

Giving Albert my casual good morning and good-to-see-you nod on my way out for mile 2, he pulled his head back in surprise. I looked behind me to see if something else had caught his eye. No, I realized, my ensemble of short running shorts and compression socks was a revelation to him. What that revelation was, I don't know, except to say it was a revelation to me, too.


I was hurt. Not emotionally hurt. When I'm training for something I'll do anything to stay healthy. I'd wear my graduated compression socks out for a black-tie event. This was just the first time I'd worn them out for a morning run. Part of the problem is my personal approach to injury is a lot like how surfers think about sharks: it doesn't exist, injuries happen to other people. That kind of attitude is fine until you see the fins a few feet away from your surfboard or if you're only on mile 2. Anyway, I should have known that running a one-legged 5k on a concrete surface can cause this kind of pain and that the sharks were too close, but I didn't.

So here's what we're looking at. This is a rough sketch I found with some of my other notes and scraps of paper on my desk. I'm not sure I can actually take credit for the drawing, but the point is, that thing is fragile. Albert knew it, the good people at Zoot who make compression socks know it, and I need to admit it.

Getting to the start line (pictured below) has to be the first goal now, since the ultimate goal is actually running the race.

As for Albert, and my morning of firsts, I ran twelve steps. Waves of pain swept up my leg to my hip and somehow made it to my ear and screamed "STOP!"

So I did.

Continuing to run, to meet JR, and to go for 9 miles would have introduced a whole new set of problems that I wasn't willing to invite. In my finest hobbling-ballerina swagger I came back into the building and nodded to Albert, who smiled and said, "Finished already."