Dont Should on Me

October 16, 2021

It’s no secret, I love running. Correction: I love trail running. I tolerate road running. Anyway, I belong to several trail running Facebook groups. TBH, running groups are the main reason I still have and use Facebook. I’m still discovering new groups as I fall deeper in love with trail running and in those groups, a frequent topic is injury. Now, hold your horses and don’t start with that “well of course it’s about injury, running isn’t good for you” crap! That’s not where this is going and no, running isn’t bad for you. The topic specifically is more along the lines of, ‘how did you cope with yourself while not running?’ And ‘how did you come back from your injuries?’. Now THAT I can talk about! So, after spending a LOT of time one night writing out a very detailed response to a frustrated runner in one of these groups, only to have it DELETED on me before I could hit “publish”, I decided I’d write it all here. Then I can copy and paste next time. Boom!

I’ve kind of always been a runner, but I didn’t really identify as a runner. Huh? I played sports in middle school, loved basketball. Then got to high school and realized I had no actual talent with sports requiring hand-eye coordination. Somehow I ended up doing track somewhere along the way. Indoor track specifically. Which, I was saddened to learn, was NOT, in fact, indoors. We had every single meet outside. In the freezing cold, on literal frozen tracks. What the crap is this?! I stayed with it and ended up doing spring track as well, mostly doing the 400m, 4x400m relay, and 300m hurdles. I wasn’t really that fast, but I could hang. I had no idea what I was doing on hurdles and our coach was pretty much useless to the sprinters (he focused more on the mid-long distance runners because he was a cross country guy). I learned about hurdling from other team mates and a camp I went to. My girlfriends were all cross country runners and tried to get me to do that, I was like, ‘oh hell no! That’s a really long time to run! You guys are crazy!’ 

In college and beyond, I ran recreationally. Somehow my HS bestie and I decided it would be a good idea to run a half marathon, so in 2010 we ran the Richmond Half Marathon. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to walk ever again. My knees hurt so bad after that race. Plus, I’d done all of that training by myself. There weren’t a lot of running groups around (that I knew of, and I am a VERY late adapter of technology – I mean, who STARTS a blog in 2021??) So I hadn’t really enjoyed training for that race. I still ran here and there as I could but wasn’t really committed to it. When we moved closer to the city (still in a suburb, but a much closer one), I came upon some folks who ran, invited me to a running group, and changed my life. There was almost ALWAYS someone you could run with! It was awesome! 

In 2015, once again, I let a friend talk me into running another half marathon (I should have known better). It had been five years since my last one and I figured it wouldn’t be too bad, especially with a friend. It sucked. Sucked. The race itself was great but the weather was HOT and I was miserable. I’m freaking never doing that again. But I kept running because the community of women I’d found were so fun and inspiring! I eventually signed up for a 15k race, that’s 9.3 miles, in November of 2016. I trained all summer for it, but late that summer I’d been dealing with plantar fasciitis. As a runner, I’d had it before and knew what I needed to do to treat it. And I just kind of kept trucking along. It wasn’t comfortable at all, but I could still run. Then the pain starting going up the outside of my ankle and I knew something wasn’t right. I made an appointment with a local podiatrist who’d come highly recommended from other runners in our group (another benefit of such a large community of runners!). I remember very distinctly that I had my kids with me for that appointment, about 2-3 days before my 15k. They grab a quick Xray and the doctor starts his exam and history with me. Then he steps out to go look at the films (their office didn’t have a digital X-ray machine at the time). When he comes back, he’s asking me all kinds of weird questions like, “Have you ever had a bone density study?” Um, dude, I’m 35 years old, NO I HAVE NOT and why are you asking me this? “Well, you have a 5th metatarsal fracture”. I’m sorry, WHAT?! But that’s not what hurts! Can I still run on it? I have a race on Saturday! I wish you could have seen the look on his face. But I knew he understood because he is also a runner. “Well, I mean, you CAN, you’ve been running on it this long. But it isn’t going to feel good. You should be in a boot”. Mmmm kkk. Thanks! Bye! I schedule a follow up and walk/run my race that weekend. And he was right. It hurt. A lot, especially after the race. So I humbly called his office on Monday and asked for the boot. 

I don’t remember exactly how long I was in the boot for the metatarsal fracture, it was probably 4-6 weeks? Then when I was able to run again, I was still having pain in the same foot, more trips to the doc. Was diagnosed with tarsal tunnel syndrome which required a couple of steroid injections, separated by a few weeks each and more time in the boot. Attempted to run again and was still having pain so he ordered an MRI to rule out any floating bone chips in the ankle joint. Thankfully that was not the case but I did have swelling in the bone marrow of the distal tibia, which apparently, is a precursor to a stress fracture. Time for some heavy duty anti inflammatories and more boot time. Tried running again, no dice. So in early March 2017, I had a procedure to inject synthetic bone material. I thought that would be no big deal, but boy was I wrong! The pain was terrible and I was out of work a bit longer than I originally wanted to be. But you guessed it, more boot time. By now I’d had a friend’s wife bedazzle my walking boot – it was amazing.

Sometime in April I was cleared to try running, once again. He told me I could only run short distances. Dude, I’m dying here …. Fine. I got impatient though and while I kept my runs short, I was pushing the speed. Until one day when the bottom of my foot caught on fire about one mile into my run. I couldn’t walk it off and it kept happening every time at around the 1 mile mark. Back to the doctor. Another MRI. This time it is a 10-15% transverse tear of the plantar fascia. “That’s the same injury Peyton Manning had, except his was 15-20% and he had to have surgery to repair it”. Huh. Ain’t that something. More anti inflammatories and more weeks in the boot. It wasn’t really healing so, in an attempt to avoid surgical repair, I elected for a procedure called “radiofrequency coblation”. They basically insert a tiny electrical probe into the problem area and zap it a little at a frequency just enough to irritate it but not permanently damage the tissue. The idea is that will stimulate your body to repair itself. After that, you guessed it, more boot time! It was nearing June/July by this point and we had a trip to Africa planned. I told the doc that there was NO WAY I was going to Africa in a walking boot, not for vanity reasons, but for safety/security reasons. So, I came out of the boot just before that trip and though my foot probably wasn’t quite ready, it helped that I wore stiff hiking shoes for all of our safaris. When we returned from our trip, I started PT to build up the strength in my left foot/ankle after going through so much the last 7-8 months. 

I don’t remember how long it was before I was able to even start “baby runs” again. But I was NOT going to repeat any of the last few months so I took it really slow. I mean, painfully slow, for the next 4-5 months. I needed new running shoes and that is always a hunt that stresses me out. I found Altras and really loved how comfy they felt! I knew I needed to transition into them slowly so I spent the next few weeks doing that. They felt awesome, no calf pain while running or anything! Then I started to get extreme pressure in both of my calves. It was a pain unlike anything I’d felt before, it wasn’t sore muscles, it was pressure and tightness. I described it as feeling like what I imagined compartment syndrome would feel like. I took some time off but the pain kept happening and I knew something was very wrong. I went to an orthopedist/sports medicine specialist and he believed it was from my zero drop shoes, that I’d transitioned too quickly. 

So, more time off and more PT. This time I went to a different PT and it was amazing! He did a full gait analysis and we started working right away on my hips/glutes. I spent a lot of time in that PT office in early 2018 and I was very diligent about doing my at-home exercises too. When it was finally time to try running again, it started with more baby runs. So many baby runs. Progress was frustratingly slow but given all I’d been through the last year or so, I just wanted running back! I was going to go as slow as I needed to so I could get back out there. 

I’d been through so much over the past 15 months. And I’d missed out on a ton of time with friends, races, sanity. It was hard to not be able to just put on my sneaks and get out for a mind-clearing, therapeutic friend sesh. When you and your friends are busy moms, sometimes that is the only social time you get. So, I had to readjust my own expectations of myself. I had to decide what was more important to me: was it keeping up with what everyone else can do such as running 5-6 days a week, doing speed work, etc.? Or was it just being able to get out there for as many years to come as possible, even though that probably meant not running as often or as long as everyone else? I chose the latter. And I began to embrace interval running. It was a mindset shift for sure, but once I got the hang of it, I realized intervals allowed me to stay out there longer while maximizing healing. Some of my friends even did intervals with me, which was so generous! 

So I began rebuilding in late January 2020, after over 2 years of major setbacks, with this renewed focus on running longevity. I slowly built up, figured out my body’s happy place as far as how many days a week I could run without injury, and even completed a 24 hour 50k challenge in April 2020! And then we moved to Charlotte, in the middle of a pandemic. Because I’m still human and simply can’t take no for an answer, I’d signed up for a 50k that was supposed to take place in May 2020. Because of the pandemic, it was moved to September, a fortunate turn of events since I would not have been ready to run a 50k in May. But I was still training, all of those long interval runs by myself. Through SRTT (She Runs This Town/Moms Run This Town), I’d met a lovely woman, Penny, who would meet me for interval miles on a local Greenway and that really helped but I needed to do those super long runs on the trails. It was starting to get old and finishing those long miles (every one a new distance PR) in the heat and humidity was a major struggle. Through another Facebook running group, I connected with a group of BALRs (Bad Ass Lady Runners) who really got me through the remainder of those training runs. And in September 2020, I completed my first 50k! The course was so tough and the last few miles were straight up. I honestly don’t think I could have done it without Tara, yet another amazing woman I’d met through SRTT. Tara and I had run together a few times in VA before she moved away. Tara was so generous with her patience and knowledge of ultras and I’m pretty sure she’s the only reason I was able to drag myself up those final climbs, some of which were so steep I could barely keep forward momentum. I guess it’s kind of fitting that my journey to completing an ultramarathon was, in itself, an ultramarathon.