Mile 8 - A different kind of advice

Now, being injured brings all kinds of different problems. It's not only the physical and the mental struggle to find the right approach to getting healthy. There is advice and there is more advice. Everyone has advice, and to quote one my favorite bands, "opinions are like kittens, everyone is giving 'em away."

Most runners have been injured, at some point or another, and can sympathize. Most people want to truly help especially if your problem is, say, tied to the very mission of the place where you work. And only some people actually think about your problem outside the realm of their experience. In my case, working at Urban Athletics, I've been gifted with an entertainingly drastic range of perspectives. I love our customers in the kind of way you get to see your cousins once or twice a year and talk about the things you know you have in common, but sometimes even those conversations go horribly awry.


After telling one person about my tibialis, I was told, "Well, if you just think about getting healthy, then your body well begin to heal." Though I did not look into the efficacy of this kind of advice, I suspected that this may not be the kind of opinion, or kitten, that I would take into my own home.


And then of course, I listened to another person explain, "If you take ten or twelve aspirins there isn't really any pain to respond to. I'm not saying your liver will love you, but hey, you'll be running."


About two weeks ago, Toby Tanser, a longtime friend of Jerry's, walked into Urban Athletics off 92nd and Madison and sat down. Toby was a fast runner in his own right, did some successful coaching, wrote a few books, and works in some capacity with the New York Road Runners. Currently he describes what he does as a "Full time volunteer, CEO & staff, of Shoe4AfricaPLEASE SPONSOR ME FOR AN AMAZING RUN: www.shoe4africa.org/toby

Picture from Runner's World Article about Toby Tanser (http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-411--12443-0,00.html)

He asked me how I was doing. I outlined the problem as stated above and he thought about it for a minute. This is what he told me.

"In the late nineties there was a phenom runner called Dominic Kirui. He had a really bad achilles injury. Most doctors said it would be career-ending; as he was an elder athlete most advised him to just give up. One doctor said complete rest would be the cure. Dominic did that--for an entire year he stayed home and did absolutely no cross training. After a year he returned and ran a PR of 27 minutes on the American roads. I think the lesson is there for us all to be learned, that sometimes plain and simple rest is the way to get injury-free. Cross training, PT and the rest of it are sometimes best left aside because the body will recover strongest if allowed to heal in its own natural way. In the same way a nutritionist could never invent a powerbar food with all the exact goodness of nature's apple."

What does that mean? There are no shoes to suggest for rest, no compression socks, no apparel or sports drinks. Sometimes all that can be done is waiting for the next fight. And maybe I'll think about getting healthy while I'm at it.

Mile 7

My family and friends have bought plane tickets and made hotel reservations for the weekend of November 7.


Every other person I see seems to ask me, "Hey, how is your leg?" or "How is the training going?"


There's been something of a gap between Mile 6 and Mile 7 precisely because I don't know how to answer these questions. I've signed up for the marathon, did the base mileage, went to see my prophet, bought all these vitamins, and took Dan's suggestion and did ART... but my training in the last four to five weeks has either taken place sitting on a stationary bike or barely jogging four miles only to find that familiar pain in my right leg whispering, "Remember me?"

So what do I do? On the one hand, you don't want to disappoint your family and friends. But there are phone calls that need to happen that make me anxious here:


"Oh, hi, Mom, yeah I was joking about coming to New York for the marathon. What's that--you didn't raise a quitter. Oh, right, and did you raise me to look like a leg-dragging zombie? Yes, I think that has something do with it, well, then don't you think we can disagree about that. No, tell Dad there are no leg operations that are cheaper than the plane fare."


My parents are actually much kinder than this anticipated conversation, but as Dan said in Mile 6, "An injured runner is a danger not only to himself but to others." I can find as many reasons to make this about something other than my personal desires as you can possibly imagine, but the leg is still there whispering. It's hard to ignore. And perhaps it's a little demented to say that my right leg is answering the question "Hey, how is your leg?" or "How is the training going?" But so far it is. So what's it saying?


It's not making the phone calls to tell my friends and parents, but it's telling me that, contrary to my packet from the New York Road Runners, I might not be in and Marathon Derby is an endangered species.

Imagined Reconstruction of my Skeletal Remains to appear as a Dodo