Reluctant Medical Advice

 

I went for a 6 mile run this morning and the weather was perfect. I love the late fall crispiness to the air (mid 40’s) when the breeze is nonexistent and the traffic is light.

I didn’t plan it that way of course but with weather it either cooperates or punches you in the face. My foot pain is less of a problem than it used to be. It’s the sole (pun intended) reason for taking the last two months off from jogging Saturdays with the club. I needed the time off to recuperate so no complaints. I even went to the doctor a few weeks ago to make sure nothing was fractured in the foot. OK so I’m a bit dramatic. I don’t handle chronic pain well. So I paid the co-pay fee and had them X-ray it and----nothing. The doctor gave a pure genius tip though, “Ummmm…..make sure you stretch before you run”. Yeah? Thanks Doc. Guess that’s why they pay you so much. All you had to do was look at the little black and white transparency of my bone structure huh?

Am I a little bitter that they didn’t find something seriously wrong? Like I wanted the doctor to roll over on his desk chair to the padded table I’m sitting on and exclaim “My God man! How are you even still alive? Nurse, get in here and take this man to surgery at once! Can’t you see, he needs to be out there jogging! I've never seen such an extreme case of "stressed foot!"

Why am I not ecstatic that the prognosis is basically ‘Man being a sissy’?

The cure of course is an extra dose of ‘deal with it’ and ‘make whatever changes you have to’. So I’ve waited until the pain becomes so muted that I can deal with it on a short run again. I started last week on the treadmill and decided to run for 3 miles. More to point I ran for 30 minutes at a miserably slow pace to reduce the chance of worsening. One of the leaders from the run group mentioned trying a slow paced run, interrupted by a quick pace every 10 minutes. There is some data suggesting that distance improves and injuries decrease. I looked it up to be sure. The idea is to run 80% of the distance at a low heart rate and 20% at an elevated rate. So I did. That’s easy on the treadmill, less so when huffing and puffing through the neighborhoods.

Today was the first outdoor, middle distance jog I’ve done in a while. As per doctor’s orders I stretched like I haven’t done it in years. It sounds like an obvious thing to do but with age comes an increasing amount of stretching. I spend at least 10 minutes before and after now just to be sure. And I had stopped doing it pre-run, nothing feels worse than rolling out of bed bleary, irritable and putting immediate pressure on your hamstrings. Thanks for that doc “Why don’t you give a nice papercut and pour lemon juice in it”—Miracle Max (Princess Bride). I’d come around to the view by a lot of other runners that only an AFTER run stretch makes any sense. The muscles are too cold before a jog anyway. Well maybe I was wrong.

The stretching wasn’t the only thing different for me. I tried to consciously keep a slower pace than what I normally run. It meant looking at the watch constantly to see the average pace time. It’s tricky though. I’m not good at watch gazing for time or distance. Being aware at all times is like treadmill running, you can’t ease into the pace if your focus is on the measurables. But I stayed aware and managed to hit my quick burst every 10 minutes for 2 minutes. I did this for an hour for a total distance of 6 miles. 

The funny part of that is I didn’t really slow up at all. I stayed on my regular pace (basically) and instead just got really quick for two minutes. That’s not exactly the way it’s supposed to work but whatever. I enjoyed myself in the perfect weather and spend my Saturday morning the only way that feels right--After the stretching of course.