Limitations
One of my main strategies for success in life has always been to act like I knew what I was talking about and that I had the skills to do a thing, and then just try to do it. To be clear, this has not always worked out and has gotten me into a trouble a few times, but, on balance, approaching situations with the unearned self confidence of a heterosexual middle aged white male has worked more often than not. But training for this project, at my age, and especially after my injury last fall, is forcing me to try to recognize my limitations and work within them. Case in point: I’m currently dealing with a little bit of a hip problem, and I’m going to need to back off training for a little while until it heals up. Like Shakira, my hips don’t lie. I will need to listen to them.
My usual approach to things like injury prevention has been to ignore them. I rarely stretch, I don’t think to much about my diet as an athlete, and I usually ignore the little aches, pains, and pulls that are universal among runners. That sounds pretty dumb when I write it out like that, but, in my defense, it basically worked as a strategy for around 30 years of running. My stress fracture last fall was the first real injury I ever had as a runner—- real as in I had to get treatment for it and I had to stop training. That was about 3 months ago, and now my hip is hurting, and it is some serious work to convince myself to recognize my limitations and back off of training.
The hip thing started about 10 years ago, when I was training for a marathon (just like I was when I broke my foot last fall). I had really made that marathon a significant goal for myself. I had lost close the 30 pounds and had trained for months. I was running mile repeats/intervals as speed workouts, I was counting calories, I was focused on breaking 4 hours. And then my hip got all goofy. I got a diagnosis of “piriformis syndrome” and had to shut everything down for a week or so, and then gradually ramp back into my training. I didn’t break 4 hours but I did PR in the marathon. My hip hurt while I was running it, but I ignored it. It hurt afterward, so I stopped running for a while (and gained back about half the weight I had lost almost right away). And, as I got back into training, I accepted the hip pain as a new normal and worked around it as best I could. Over time, it got better. My strategy of basically powering through the injury had worked (?).
And then this past weekend I ran a competitive 5k— step one as I stairstep up to being able to run a half marathon at race pace— and that same hip seized up on me pretty good. And, falling back on my tried and true strategy, I ignored it and ran again on Sunday and Tuesday of this week. And then it hurt so bad that I couldn’t sleep on that side. And I looked at the calendar and saw that I’ve only got 4 months until I leave on my running roadtrip, and there’s no way I can accommodate another 6 week shut down. So I’m stretching every day, and taking hot baths with salts in the water, and icing, and not running. At least until it feels better. I am really, really trying to recognize my limitations.
A while back, I read something about “reverse brain storming” or “reverse problem solving.” The idea is that you brainstorm out all the things you would do if you were actively interested in NOT achieving your goal, and then avoid those things. The thinking is that success is achieved more often not through embracing a brilliant idea, but by avoiding the stupid ones. So, if I DIDN’T want to complete my 5 half marathon road trip this July, what would I do? Well, one thing to do would be to ignore signals from my body and run through significant pain until I get too injured to go on the trip. Just avoiding that is a whole lot easier than designing a brilliant training plan, and has a higher chance of success. And on the other hand,
”back off on my training because of a potential injury” honestly wouldn’t make it onto my reverse brainstorm list at all— after all, my goal is to complete these races, not to win them or get signed to a sponsorship. I can run them in less than ideal physical shape, but I can’t run them in a walking boot.
Anyway. If you’re new here, this is a blog documenting my thoughts and experiences while I train to run 5 half marathons across 5 states in July. The whole thing is a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank Network. You can learn a lot more about it on the other pages on this website. If you’d like to contribute, please consider clicking the big “Donate” button at the top of this page. Even small contributions help a lot. Thanks!
