Is no longer a runner, but a sad shell of a runner.

I can attest to this because I am currently injured.  And as a person who operates under considerable stress, running was my drug. I know, I know, most of you hate to run. You cannot imagine why I would torture myself with running mile after mile in the heat or cold or at 4:30am. I, on the other hand,  cannot imagine life without running. But as I was complaining about my inability to run to someone the other day, they so aptly responded, well, maybe there is a lesson to be learned in this. Oh the voice of reason.  Surely I am not injured to learn anything. I am just injured because I am stubborn and hate to slow down or relax or talk through my problems.  No, I don’t need to learn anything, I just need to get back on the road.

Ok, I am being very sarcastic.

Granted, an injury would not have been my choice of ways to learn my lesson. Especially one that as I have found out, has no easy solution. God designed all of us with something called an IT (Iliotibial) band.  It runs from your outer hip to your knee and when inflamed causes considerable pain.  I mean, the kind that caused me to limp a 1/2 mile back to the gym last Monday despite all my pride wanting to finish the run.  There are a myriad of reasons that cause IT band pain, and a few generic solutions that seem to work for some people. But enough on the anatomy lesson.  All you need to know is after almost two weeks of icing, stretching, and reading all I can on this injury, it still hurts.  My illusive runner career is for the moment cut short. I was after a week given the okay to ride a bike providing it didn’t bother it.  It didn’t hurt while riding, but today it is hurting worse so maybe biking was not the best idea.

The more research I have done on IT band syndrome, the more I am learning that the fix comes with rest, stretching, and strength training. To fix the problem, you have to be disciplined to prepare your body for the pounding it takes when running. You have to take the time to do the squats, stretch, and make sure you have the adequate shoes. None of the fixes are in and of themselves difficult. None of them are super time-consuming. But they require that you do them. If you skip them, you end up injured. Unable to run. and miserable. (ok, maybe that is a slight exaggeration)  But really is an IT band injury all that different from the rest of life? How many things can we just get up do with no training, no preparation, no discipline, and actually be successful?  Even if you can wing it once, does this mean it is a good habit to continue? I was in really good shape thanks to all the swimming and biking I was doing. Thus running 5 miles was actually pretty doable. Except that my legs were not adequately prepared for the pounding and after three weeks rebelled in a major way. They said “no way, we aren’t ready for this.”

I now have two choices.  This is the first bump in the road, the first challenge to my goals for the year that hit a little earlier then I would have liked. I can give up on running forever or I can go back to the basics, prepare and train properly, let my body heal, and soon enough get back to running as much as I want.   I am not going to give up.  I am going to make a plan, train right, and stick to it so I can run injury free.  I am going to stop being so stubborn and take the time to prepare, to stretch, and to strength train. However, perhaps the bigger picture is the rest of the life. The way that I operate day-to-day that I need to address.  I am pretty disciplined in a lot of areas of my life. However, I am easily discouraged, easily dissuaded from completing the goal, and tend to run from issues instead of dealing with them.  I have pushed a lot of things under the rug in favor of early morning workouts, grad school, and sleep. Those are not terrible ways to spend my time, but there are things in my life that are slipping that I need to address, not run from.  And while every bone in my body wants to put on my running shoes and pound out my stresses on the road, I am going to use this time to focus on the things that have been slipping and on dealing with stress in other ways. Surely there are other ways right? 🙂

Don’t count me out. Running a marathon is still on my bucket list for the year and thanks to a good doctor, a lot of ice, and growth in the area of patience on my end, it should still be very doable. After all, it is only January and one roadblock is not going to stop me from crossing things off that list. It is also a good wake-up call to stop running from the things in my life that I need to face head on and to push through the hard things to get to an end result that is far better then I would have ever imagined.

What about you? How is the year going so far? Still keeping up with your resolutions or plans or whatever you do at the beginning of the year?