My crash came 8.9 miles into a 100-mile ride (of course I knew the distance, because of course I was watching my bicycle computer). My friend Jen Davis was taking a turn leading; my husband, Bill, was drafting — riding close behind her. I was drafting Bill when a slower rider meandered into his path. Bill swerved and I hit his wheel. Down I went.
The first thing I did when I hit the ground was turn off my stopwatch — I did not want accident time to count toward our riding time. Then I sat on a curb, dazed. My head had hit the road, but my helmet saved me. My left thigh was so bruised it was hard to walk. Worst of all was a searing pain in my left shoulder. I could hardly move my arm. But since it hurt whether I rode or not, I decided, like an idiot, to finish the ride.
The next day I went to a doctor and learned, to my shock, that my collarbone was broken. Running is my sport, I thought, and no ride is worth this.
It appears that the author and I share more than our love of biking and running. We also seem to share an obsession with times and logs, and, of course, a sometimes tragic inability to know when to call it a day.
My own story began last Sunday during my usual long weekend run. I have happily kept up 30-40 miles per week through this whole pregnancy, and my long runs have averaged 10-12 miles without any apparent consequences (other than a voracious appetite). Beginning around week 25 (for the uninitiated, a pregnancy is meant to be 40 weeks), I started to think of my running in terms of weekly goals: Just get to week 26. Okay, see if you can still be running at week 27. Wouldn’t it be amazing to run 10K at week 30?
So there I was, at 34 weeks and a few days, enjoying some beautiful weather and the company of my husband in Central Park. Only the week prior I had run over 11 miles in one shot and felt great, and I had already put in 17 miles over the course of the current week, with a full rest day on Saturday. Sunday’s run was sure to be a breeze.
And it was, until about mile seven, when I stopped for a drink of water. Suddenly, I felt a stiff pain creep through my pelvis and down the fronts of my legs. I tried to start running again, but it took some time to get the gears going. Once I was moving, though, the pain went away, and I was running carefree for a couple more miles. But then, at the next water break, I again was overtaken by a crippling stiffness, bordering on pain. I started moving again, ever so slowly. Within a few hundred feet, I was feeling fine, and vowed to not stop again for the rest of the run. (In fact, when Zdenek and I needed to fill up our water bottles, I asked him to run ahead and do so quickly so that I wouldn’t need to break my stride.)
Over 10 miles later, I returned home for a pancake breakfast and cup of coffee. Everything seemed okay, until I tried to get up from the table and found that I couldn't. Once I finally did manage to prop myself up, I could barely walk. I spent the rest of Sunday immobile on the recliner until we finally made it out for a 20 minute walk at 6 pm at a pace that would be too slow for most 90 year-olds with walkers.
For the next three days, I rested completely, waiting for the ability to bend over to put on my socks to gradually return. On Thanksgiving Thursday, feeling mostly better, I headed out for a very cautious two mile “run,” but found myself once again in the chair for the rest of the day (this time even worse off than Sunday). For the following three days, I returned to the gym that I haven’t set foot in since May and set myself up on the elliptical machine for 45-50 minutes at a time. I tried to convince myself that I can enjoy working out indoors (I can’t, but I can tolerate it when I have no other option).
Fast forward to today and I am finally feeling 95% heeled. I rolled out of bed in the darkness of the early morning and ran another slow two miles (this time with Zdenek, who is battling his own injuries these days!). I confirmed that I can still run, but it’s at such a slow pace that it hardly seems worth it. I am actually at the point where I can get a far better workout inside four walls, and running isn’t as fun as it should be. While I might still log some miles between now and "the end," I'm guessing they will be few and slow. I suppose I overdid it, and now I have to pay the price.
But I take solace in the same NY Times article, in which the author goes on to say:
With running, even though I realize that I and others who got injured could not have prevented our injuries, somehow I blamed myself. It was “overuse,” even though overuse is apparent only in retrospect, as you cast about for a reason why you got injured.
Yes, I could have taken it easier and perhaps gotten three or four more weeks of increasingly slow running in return. Maybe if I had stopped when the pain kicked in at seven miles last week, I’d still be running three or more today. But the past eight months have been some of the most enjoyable and rewarding running I’ve ever known. Running frequently and long has kept me sane and happy and given me a sense of control that I thought pregnancy would surely rob me of. I never imagined I’d be in this kind of shape heading into the final stretch, and I’m thankful for every 10 mile run that got me here.
I got injured because I love running and how it makes me feel. And that's okay by me.
