Being injured sucks.
Now, I’m sure that seems like an obvious statement but there it is. I’ve been down for almost 3 weeks now with plantar fascitis.
It happened on an unscheduled Monday morning run around the Arrowhead Loop with Jon and Courtney. Sunday Courtney posted on the FB group that they were in town and asked if anyone wanted to join them for a run Monday at 5:30 am. I jumped at the chance to run with them because I hadn’t seen them in awhile.
I was the only person, other than Jon and Courtney, to show up. We started out fairly slow about a 10:30 pace the second mile sped up a little to around a 10 minute pace. At that point Courtney told Jon and I to take off and not worry about staying with her. So, Jon and I took off and went down to a 9:20 pace.
It was in this third mile and chatting with Jon that this run had a shot at negative splits. I’ve never done negative splits on any run of any distance. I was pretty excited by the prospect. So, as we crossed the 3 mile point Jon kicked it up a notch and I went with him.
Jon does a fantastic job of pushing without getting annoying about it. We were cruising along just a little under 9 minute mile pace and I started feeling a twinge in my foot just in front of the heel. Normally I would have stopped and walked a little to feel out what was going on but the prospect of being so close to negative splits for a 4 mile run I pushed on. With about a quarter mile left it was starting to hurt and I changed my gait a little to try to relieve the pain without slowing down. By the time I finished I could barely walk. BUT we got the negative splits finishing the last mile in 9 minutes!
I haven’t been able to run for about a month. I could barely walk the first week and decided that I should get some help with this. Not so much to get through the acute phase but to figure out why it’s happening and prevent the next time.
So, I decided to set an appointment with Charlie Boeyink at Cadence Physical Therapy. Charlie is a runner and often comes on runs with the EYPAZ group and Tortoise and Hare Running store. I decided that this would be a good idea since he is a runner, so he has a better understanding of the stresses of running and the mechanics involved. Not to mention the mentality of an endurance runner. Namely that we are nuts and go insane when we can’t run.
Charlie has a little different approach to PT than a lot of the other physical therapists that I’ve been to. He doesn’t like the model of seeing the therapist for just a couple of minutes and then getting handed off to a technician who, for the most part, watches you do exercises that you do at home. He is very hands on and looks at more than just the injury to what may have contributed to the injury happening in the first place.
He has also introduced me to a new technique. It involves dry needling and, just to up the game a little, he hooked a TENS unit to two of the needles and started running electricity through it. Dry needling is odd enough on its own and I’ve had that done before, but adding electricity to it is, um….interesting. And I liked it! I liked it a lot actually.
It also seems to have gotten good results. After 3 weeks, I’ve been able to get back to running. Albeit I’m taking it slow and easing back into it, but last Thursday I ran about 2 miles. At Charlie’s advice I ran 2 minutes then walked a minute with very minimal pain. Actually I wouldn’t call it pain as much as mild discomfort, closer to fatigue than pain.
Saturday morning I ran in the Tortoise and Hare Sports 4 mile Ice Cream Run. For this run I did a 2 minute on and 2 minute recovery cycle. This worked very well. Although my pacing on the run portions is all over the place. the first two cycles were 7:52 and 7:47 respectively. Then a couple of 8:30ish, a 8:09, a 9:45 and the last one was 6:04. I have got to find some consistency. Of course this is a similar problem to what I’ve always had. I have no concept of pacing. That is something to work on as I re-train from this injury.
The next real race that I’m signed up for is the Swiss Days race at the end of July back in Indiana. I’m hoping that I can be recovered from this injury and able to average 7 minute miles for that race. It would be a return to my high school times in a race that I ran several times when I was in high school. I also will be running with my cousins, as it’s our annual Steiner Gathering.
This means that my extremely fast cousin Brad will be there. He mentioned recently coming out of retirement from competitive racing to do one more 5K at speed. He is a sub 18 running and may be even faster than that. My goal is going to be to hang on to him for as long as I can and see if he can pull me into a sub 20.
Currently, I don’t know when my next run is going to be. I’m under orders to report back how the 4 mile run went and wait for instructions. In the mean time I’m going to install a hitch on my car and try to find a used bike carrier.
Until next time…C-YA!
Running with Neal 