To be fair, I’m not a resolution guy. Seems a bit insincere to choose one point in time to be focused on what will make you better in the many days to come. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but if we are going to make changes to our life, by choice, it’s not going to happen if we only focus on deciding what’s best for us over the coming year at that one point in time. Really our life choices should be based on a lifetime’s accumulation of pertinent information, along with being flexible to adapt as we negotiate the coming times as we live them. Again, nothing wrong with it, however it seems just a bit short sighted.
However I am a big believer in the opportunity for reflection, and the end of one year and the start of a new one seems a great time to do so. Some would say I’m splitting hairs and I find it hard to argue that. But there is a difference between sitting there on either the last day of the year or the first, stating the new year means this to me, versus reflecting on how you did last year meeting your goals and how you want to go about achieving the ones coming up in the new year.
Earlier in the fall I had a hope to get things back on track and make one big push for a capstone experience, excited by my time in September crewing Elizabeth during her Wasatch experience. Mine was going to be on a much smaller scale comparatively, but it was not going to lack raw beauty or challenge. Just as it seemed I was getting my running legs under me I was shellacked by a knee issue desperate to make itself known. Coming out of the blue, with no acute reason for its arrival certainly took a lot of wind out from my sails.
12 years ago I was out running with a buddy along the Wapack trail and took a wrong step, twisted my knee good, but was able to limp my way through the rest of the run seemingly no worse for wear. While sore at the time, I was still able to run on it, mostly uninterrupted, though it did seem to “catch” every once in a while. I would be able to take a couple careful steps and pretty much go right back to my normal running.
However, one August Saturday morning, out for either the first of my marathon training runs, or what some might consider my last long run day before starting marathon training, things came to a head. Running around a gate to access a rail trail, my knee locked up and I fell. While there was no damage to my legs, I caught myself in the fall with my right hand and the force blew the end of my ulna off (in what they call a distal olecranon fracture.) A twist of my arm and a few expletives to go with the shooting pain, the bone fragment popped back into place and I considered completing the run (as I wasn’t sure what damage had occurred.) Thankfully my running partners turned me around. I half ran/half walked back to the car and made the trip to the doctors.
In the doctor’s office, now in enough pain to know I wouldn’t have finished my hour run, I asked them to cast me up so I could continue with my marathon preparations. With a slight smirk, the attending emergency room physician said they were pretty sure my visit to the orthopedic was going to mean no cast, just a sling, as casting an elbow insures a permanent loss of mobility. They turned out to be correct, and I was assigned only exercises which wouldn’t endanger the elbow again. I had my road bike set up on a wind trainer and a borrowed aqua belt as my new training tools in the cross training arsenal. Anyone who knows me knows I’m very stubborn and I only like what I like, which is running, not cross training.
So after the rest of the summer either doing out and back runs in Gilmore Pond or an hour in the basement sitting uncomfortably upright on the wind trainer, six and a half weeks away from an activity I do most every day. Turns out I was given clearance to run right as the cross country season was cranking back up, allowing me to do some running with the newer athletes to the program.
Just two days into the season I recognized both my knees were bothering me when I ran, in a way they had never hurt me before. After two weeks of limping around I reached out to orthopedics for a consult as I never had joint pain quite like this. Early observation looked like I might have some meniscus damage, maybe a tear that was getting caught in the knee movement causing inflammation. An MRI visit indicated along with a bunged up meniscus, I had a bunch of garbage floating around in there and thus scheduled for arthroscopic surgery to get it cleaned out. The left knee was bothering me the most, so it was the first to go under the knife.
Six months later, back on my feet and during the spring track season I was again able to run with the newbies and of course my right knee started to hurt as it had seen everything my left knee as far as damage goes. Another MRI and another confirmation about junk floating around in there. I asked my ortho if it would still be alright to run a little, as I had just gotten back to it and didn’t want to lose a year and a half of non running for my left knee. He said sure, anything I might mess up, he would simply go in and fix when we scheduled the surgery.
However this time I was able to work my way through it, and as time went on my knee began to feel better, eventually getting to the point it didn’t hurt. Trying to be my own WebMD, I hypothesized that while I certainly had junk in the knee, (as seen in the arthroscopic pictures) it didn’t really bother me when I was running a reasonable amount of mileage. All that junk existed before I broke my elbow, but after six + weeks of non impact on my leg joints, the leg muscles simply got lazy, not giving the knee the support they had previously, and the junk began causing pain. Strengthen those muscles and let them protect the knee and I will be alright.
And that lasted for a good ten plus years. However time now finds me low in mileage and high in body weight, something I used to manage by running solid mileage. I don’t believe that I recently had some “event” which created the acute pain in my knee, but rather the hens have come home to roost and circumstances have come together than I’m going to need to take some more acute measures to gain control of my current situation. While the entry date has come and gone for that final test piece for 2025, my new goal is in getting to a point, so when the entry period arrives next December, I won’t have to be making a choice on whether to sign up or not. Rather, which distance of experience I will be looking to take on.
The goal is to be back on my feet, a bunch lighter and without specific pain. I don’t have delusions of the fountain of youth, but I’d like to reassemble myself such that my choice of adventure is not determined by my inability to run. My resolve is to have resolve, resolved to find a way to get back into this sport so I can continue doing what I love. Every year gets harder, but with that in mind, there is no time like the present to get moving in the right direction.
But now I’m back at the beginning. I just got cleared to begin a walk/run program by my PT. Yesterday saw my first run in two months, if it can be called a run. Four minutes walking, one minute of running, for twenty minutes, every other day for a week. Then 3 minutes of walking, 2 minutes of running. Two then three. One then four. You get the picture.
This is certainly different than any other return to running I have ever done. But to be honest, I’ve never tried to get things going on 57 year old legs before. Father Time forgives no one and seeing as I‘ve never been this old before I suppose it only makes sense this time is different.
I’ll (fingers crossed) see you out there.
