Telltale Signs of Wear & Tear

The pool where I swim is one of those places where triathletes gather to train, shoot the breeze, compare performance times and trade war stories.

One of those triathletes is a friend I'll call Wolf. He's about two years older than me and had a hip replacement two years ago and has recovered marvelously. I see him running every now an then at a pretty good clip on the same street  run on, and he is swimming, biking and doing yoga.

Yesterday, I told him about my hip injury from the Tupelo Marathon a year and a half ago, the terrible time I had getting a proper diagnosis, and the steroid injections in my right SI joint that got me back on the road to recovery. Because of my lingering concerns about hip deterioration and thinking one day I might need hip replacement surgery, I asked him what sort of signals he was getting from his body before he needed surgery.

"I broke my leg running the New York City Marathon," he said He'd been running with a hairline fracture that broke clean through and left him laying on the pavement waiting for an ambulance.

The hospital repaired the damage with a bunch of pins, the hip got infected and after several surgeries he had the hip completely replaced.

His hip is fine, he said. Now it's his left knee.

"Sucks getting old," I told him.

We had a laugh about that but it got me thinking. What if I've been running with a hairline or stress fracture and don't even know it? I could be running merrily along when, Pow! My hip breaks, or my femur shatters and down I go. That feeling I had at mile 20 in the Tupelo race sure felt like something snapped.

Stress fractures don't show up on regular x-rays. You would need a PET scan, my chiropractor friend John said over drinks at the pub last night.

I'm sure that's not the case with me, just arthritis from age. As I told Wolf, it sucks getting old.

Which reminds me. Time to sign up for the NYC Marathon.

And now, here's "Duchess" by The Stranglers:

Another Milestone

Is running in the fog good for you? I don't know if there is any scientific evidence one way or the other, but the last two times I've run under a "spot of weather", my performance was better than it has been in months.

On the other hand, this article suggests it's not such a good idea.

Take today for instance. I had another amazing run, and achieved another milestone: Ran a total of 7 miles -- over the Melbourne Causeway and back --  in 1:12:34, not a great pace compared to what I used to run but respectable for someone recovering from hip injuries. Still, sustaining that kind of pace for seven miles? Pretty cool.

Best part, I ran the first four miles at a 9:33 pace! The last three miles I sort of took it easy, jogged, stretched, ran backwards (it didn't reduce my time, sadly). Call it a recovery run.

Now, 12 hours later, I can say I feel no better or worse for the wear, and I've taken no pain killers today. I think it helped that I rested Friday and got a massage and chiropractic adjustment.

Just hope this doesn't boomerang on me and I wake up unable to get out of bed in the morning.

Anyway, I've reached an epiphany: My hip hurts whether I run or not, so I might as well run.

Here's "Bloodbuzz, Ohio," by The National (one of the best running songs yet):

Keep the Body Movin'

OK, so I overdid it last week, running three days in a row, faster and harder each day.

I caught a cold on Friday, and spent the weekend alternating between the bed and the couch, watching old movies from the 1940s and 1950s. "Murder, My Sweet". "Damn Yankees". "Flower Drum Song." "Picnic".

Getting a cold sucks. Watching old movies makes me feel better.

Having my SI joint flare up also sucks. But taking drugs makes it feel better.

And all weekend, I had to tell myself, "No. Don't run. Rest. Get well."

I paid attention to myself. I rested.

The advice paid off.

I laced up this morning and ran a solid 3.7 miles, at intervals.

The first two miles I ran at a 19:46 warm-up pace. Then I jogged another .3 miles at 3:36 and ran a straight mile at 9:02. Then I jogged the last quarter mile home at a leisurely 4:16.

Was anybody watching?

Who cares!

On top of it all, I felt great all day, and felt no need to take a pain pill.

But I learned a valuable lesson. Always rest a day between runs.

And I learned another thing. My iPod Nano has a stop watch! And I'm using it.

Oh, and a third thing, I've learned. You've got to keep the body movin'.

Dry the Rain

I've been bicycling as a substitute for running. Pumping my mountain bike over the Melbourne causeway makes me wish I hadn't sold my road bike, but it's good exercise.

I do 12 miles -- over the causeway to Melbourne Beach and back. It's a good workout because it takes about an hour, doesn't pound the hell out of my SI Joint or aggravate all those bone spurs lined up between the sacrum and ilium like so many coral formations. And that incline is a bitch.

But the traffic is hell, especially with all that construction going on. I have to share the path with walkers and joggers, something I'm not fond of doing, especially when I whiz by at 15 mph and make little old ladies jump when I say, "Bike left!" or "Heads up!"

Days I'm not riding my bike, I'm doing piriformis stretches, yoga, physical therapy floor exercises. And I use a styrofoam roller I got from my chiropractor, Dr. John Workman.

I was doing quite a bit of that with the rain we've had these last two days.

One thing I've noticed: as the pain eases in my SI Joint, it seems to be centering on the hip socket. My massage therapist, Tony, has done a lot of work trying to calm down the tendons and fibers that connect my femur to my hip. It hurts like a mother fucker.

And it makes me wonder how that would feel if I were to take to the trails.

And now, here are The Shins doing a song of one of my faves, the Beta Band -- "Dry the Rain."

Roadkill Reboot

OK. It's been two weeks since my major setback, when my neurosurgeon/radiologist told me to stop running while he continued the SI Joint injection steroid treatments. Let the medication do its job. Let those bone spurs dissolve, or whatever it is they're supposed to do.

So I did just that. I waited it out for two weeks, did some yoga, rode my bike, walked, ate painkillers and muscle relaxers, did physical therapy stretches, and somehow managed to lose a few pounds. I even rode about 12 miles on Sunday. It felt good.

Then last night, feeling antsy, I walked. And my hip joint flared right up again. Today my hip and piriformis muscle were in agony. But that didn't stop me from doing yoga this morning and taking a long walk after dinner this evening. I've got to do something to stay in shape.

Anyway, since running is out of the question until the end of this year, I had to rename my blog and shift the focus since I can no longer write about running and recovery. This is strictly about recovery now. Playing the Waiting Game. Hoping the treatment will heal my injuries so that I can truly run again. Without crippling myself.

But who am I kidding. I feel like roadkill, like something that's been trampled on, just like the slogan for the Tupelo Marathon that did me in a year ago Labor Day weekend predicted.

And now, "Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road," By Loudon Wainwright III. What did you expect?

Bone-spurs on the saddle

This is depressing. I was doing great. Really enjoying building up my running regimen to about 20 miles a week.

But now I have to put a kybosh on the running, for a couple of months, anyway.

When I went in this morning for my second steroid injection for my SI Joint inflammation, my doctor and I discussed my running, how much of it I was doing, whether it was causing pain. He showed me a whole mess of bone spurs along my sacro-ilial joint. Strenuous exercise, pushing too hard, causes those spurs to jangle.

"Your injury is related to high levels of pounding," he said, preaching moderation in all things. "Although I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what moderation means."

Well, yeah. For more than two years I was training for and running in marathons. I was going through a new pair of training shoes every three months. So the idea of running three to five miles a day, with one nice 8-miler thrown in on the weekends didn't seem unreasonable, and it didn't seem to be hurting.

"The medicine I'm giving you lasts 4-6 weeks," he said, during which time I might not feel the pain that would normally register from my injury. Once the medication wore off, I'd be going around saying, "Like, hey, where did that come from?!"

Point taken: I'm still injured. His goal is to correct the injury, get me back to health and keep me from doing anything that would make that injury permanent. Pain has a way of following pathways, he said. If this had gone on for another year, I'd be owning this pain for the rest of my life.

That's why I'm here, I told the doc. Stop running, he said.

Do things that don't pound the joints. Stretch. Bike. Swim. Walk. Do yoga.

But for the next two months, he said, do not run.

That is going to be very tough indeed. Because these boots were not made for walkin'.

Now, here to ease my pain is "Blood on The Saddle," a classic Tex Ritter song done to death by The Dropdead Beats (with a lead singer channeling Tom Waits):

Hard Eight

Gamblers have a term for betting the dice will come up double fours in a craps roll. Hard eight. The odds are so enormous that the payout is huge. There's a great character study of a film by the same name, directed by Paul Michael Thomas. It stars John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall and Gwyneth Paltrow as a hooker with a heart of coal.

Hard eight is what I ran Sunday evening. For me, it was the first time in more than a year that I ran eight miles without stopping, and ran it at a sustained pace of about 10 minutes. Not bad considering I laid off running for a year and am being treated for a SI Joint inflammation, which was misdiagnosed alternatively as diskitis, lower disk protrusion and rheumatoid arthritis. It's an inflamed joint, and the anti-inflammatories I'm taking have knocked it down enough that for the last four weeks I've been able to run four times a week, with at least one big run thrown in the mix just to see if I can do it. I can do it.

The first few times were tough. I'd run two miles, rest, maybe walk a bit, jog over the causeway, rest, walk a bit, and do the same on my way back. Last week I managed to run over the causeway without a break, a full 3.7 miles. I stopped for a water break, stretched and ran back over the causeway, took one more water break, and then home.

After two days off, with about 240 miles of driving to West Palm thrown in, a barbecue, some kayaking, much beer drinking and a depressing night watching the Gators get torn to shreds by Bama, I was back home Sunday, doing the laundry and decided to lace up -- still running in my year-old-plus Brooks Adrenalines. I can safely say, without any doubt, after tonight that the spring is shot, and I need new shoes.

For some reason, I felt pretty pumped. Bouncing off the balls of my feet, shoulders back and cruising along pretty nicely, until some kid motored by me like I was standing still. I decided to push up my game. I leaned into the causeway incline and kicked it at the top, then settled into a nice amble on the decline. By the time I got to Douglas Park, I thought, why not go all the way to the four-mile point before turning around. Why not go the whole eight mile?



My second attack of the causeway was better than the first. I drove up that hill as hard as I could, and when I got to the top I pumped it before easing into a nice trot down the hill.

The rest of the run was mostly flat with little ups and downs, and it was getting on twilight. A nice time to be running when the weather turns cool enough here in Florida. So I just kept pushing myself, willing the piriformis to loosen up and quit acting like an old codger. I ran the last half mile or so balls out.

And I finished in under 90 minutes. Maybe even 80. I should get a watch. But that means I was running right around a steady 10 minutes for a whole eight miles without stopping, except for some water at the halfway mark.

For me that is a huge milestone on the road to recovery. I was lucky to plod through four miles in 40 minutes or longer when I started running again two months ago. Running eight miles in a little over 80 minutes is huge for me, and that is saying a lot. I mean, my best running time about three years ago was a 5k where I broke 23 minutes -- my best! I used to run seven miles in 54 minutes during workouts. My time at the half-way mark for the Space Coast Marathon was 1:52, and my pace for the entire run was 9:27, for a 4:07 finish.

 It's possible that three months from now, with a couple more steroid injections, ice packs, massage therapy, yoga  and chiropractics, I could be close to those old times. It's just as possible I may never hit that 9:27 pace again, but I'm not saying I can't do it, either.

Now, for something a little different, a great scene from Hard Eight, where the duelling Philips -- Baker Hall and Seymour Hoffman -- test their wills against each other over a craps table:

Rehab 101

So, now that I'm running again, and feeling better than I have in a year, I've got to resist the temptation to fall off the wagon so to speak, and go full out on my workout regime.


That's not to say I haven't pushed the envelope with a couple of longer runs, and one really serious workout this morning where I pushed up my pace, chugged up some hills and ran as hard as I could till I felt like hurling.


That being said, I realized that there are several really good rules to follow when recovering from an injury, especially the epic SI joint inflammation that I've been dealing with.


RULE # 1: Listen to your body. Respect its limitations. You can't just go from laying on the couch for a year to putting in eight-mile runs every day. Run your best, but when the piriformis pings or the knees ache, stop and stretch, walk a bit, and ease your way back into a comfortable pace.


RULE # 2: Drink. Lots. Of. Water. The muscles like water. They need to be bathed in fluid, according to an article read in a recent issue of Running Times magazine.For two hours after a run your body is still in recovery, even as the metabolic rate slows down, according to Julia Lucas. So drink up.


RULE # 3: Feed your body. You've just had an intense workout, and you've robbed your body of lots of nutrients as a result. I like taking a multi-vitamin after a tough workout.


RULE # 4: Take it easy. The hard part is over. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Do some gardening. Read a book.


RULE # 5: Treat yourself. After my nine-miler Thursday, I had a 15-minute deep tissue massage and a chiropractic adjustment. I allowed myself a full 48 hours to derive the benefit of that massage. The New York Times just reported on a study that shows one massage session can cause amazingly beneficial biological changes. As someone who had one of the most excruciating but most beneficial massages of my life, let me say, Om.


RULE # 6: Take your meds. I don't care what other doctors may have to say about the subject, but I'm a firm believer in a doctor-supervised medical treatment as part of any recovery program -- in moderation. The meloxicam (anti-inflammatory) I take every day works on the SI inflammation, along with the massage and the regular stretching exercises. If I need to take a tramadol or muscle-relaxer to ease that piriformis ping, so be it.


RULE # 7: Stretch. Always incorporate some kind of stretching as part of your recovery. I do a combination of yoga and physical therapy positions I've learned over the years. The worst thing you can do is sit around and stiffen up.


RULE # 8: Ice it down. If it aches, alternate ice with heat to reduce the inflammation. It works.


And now, "Body Rock," by Moby: