Many things in life are predictable, reassuring, supposed to be there. I’m sure over the past few weeks you’ve seen more leaves on your local running path, maybe some acorns or walnuts. Heard the honks of migrating geese. Smelled that indefinable something that precedes autumn. How do I know that summer is lapping over into fall? I can tell by my mid-August running injury. Yep, it’s a familiar pattern. Sign up for a fall marathon, start training, injure myself, madly scramble to rehab and somehow make it to the starting line.
Interesting it was during one of my lower mileage weeks that I hobbled myself. The week included a interval track workout, a five-mile tempo run and a weekend run/walk on trails. I think it was the weekend run that did it. I was running some local hiking trails that were steep, rocky and overgrown. It did not go well. Anyway Sunday found my left calf muscle and IT band stiff, tight and hurting like I had bounced them off a rocky outcropping while filming The Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood.
Here’s where the story gets weird. I took a week off. There I said it. Usually I don’t deviate from a training program once it gets written on my calendar. I soldier on regardless of injury, pain or common sense. It’s kind of like watching someone hanging drywall in a house that’s on fire, doesn’t want to wait until the firemen leave to get started.
From here on the training narrative just keeps getting stranger. I got a massage to loosen up my muscles. The massage therapist told me that my left calf felt completely different from my right and suggest that I check to see if I was turning the left foot out or in. Good advice. Next I broke my weekend long walk/run in half. Did half of Saturday and the rest on Sunday. Then I pitched out my three-day-a-week training plan in favor of a four-day-a-week, Hal Higdon style plan.
Next I bought The Running Injury Recovery Program by Bruce R. Wilk, PT from www.Amazon.com and started reading it. I recommend it to you. I benefited from the stretches and self-massage techniques in the book and will be working my way through the exercises in the off season to get ready for Spring events. Wilk also quickly shot down some my go-to rehab techniques. I hate it when there is no evidence to support my wacky ideas.
What are the Odds?
All indications are that I am in much better shape a month out from Medoc Trail marathon that I was a month out from the Triple Lakes Trail marathon two years ago. Still I remain epically slow. So here is an Adam Savage-esque breakdown of my chances at a Medoc Marathon finisher’s medal assuming I can maintain my current “Nothing Stupid” strategy.
Making it to the start line: 90%.
Beating the 20-mile cutoff: 75%.
Walking, running, limping the final 10K: 95%.
Final prediction: However it turns out, it will be epic.