the harsh world of injury

It’s been two weeks of, practically, no running.  I’ve been cross-training quite a bit to keep up the fitness and the injury is getting better everyday.  Not being able to run for that long will sacrifice my sharpness, so I’ve decided not to race the Payton Jordan (Stanford) 10 000m next weekend.  At this point it was an easy decision to make and yet, very hard at the same time.  Even though I still feel fit I don’t think it’s a good idea to go into that kind of race not fully prepared, both physically and mentally.  It’s a tough pill to swallow as the 10 000m at PJ is going to be a great race and will likely have many guys running for 27:4X.  Races going out at that pace are few and far between as other quality 10 000m races (there are usually 4 or 5 a year) are paced for, at least, 27:low.  PJ is also good timing with the Canadian Championships on June 4th. 

The plan right now is to get healthy and start running again.  Once that happens I can start looking at races.  I will have to assess where my sharpness is after a couple of track sessions and see when it makes sense to race.

My problem lies somewhere in my SI (Sacroilliac) joint and my glute.  It is affecting my scaitic nerve from my lower back all the way down to my calf.  During sleep my SI joint gets stiff and in the morning it’s a chore to bend over to merely touch my knees.  Today was a good day, by the end I pretty much had all my flexibility with only a dull ache (usually it has been sharp) in my back.

At the end of the Flagstaff trip I was able to get massage from Austin Baillie and get help from Wynn Gmitroski and Garfield Crooks who are in Flagstaff with Gary Reed.  Since I’ve been back, Brenda Scott-Thomas has thoroughly gone over my problems to figure out what I need to do, and Marcel Meresz has helped a lot with ART and massage.

This injury has been crazy in the sense that for two weeks I have always thought I was a day or two from running where in reality I haven’t been able to run properly at all.  Some of that has to do with the fact that I’m rarely injured for more than a couple of days and also that the injury has had different forms, first my back, then my calf and once that cleared up I realized there were other things in the mix.  It has definitely been a learning experience and I will bring a few things out of this ordeal that will make me a stronger runner.

It was good to see Nate Brannen return to competition this weekend, and he did it with a 3:38 1500m!  I find that result both impressive and inspiring.  To run a 1500m that fast off the bat takes a lot of hard work and talent, I think 1500’s are tough to run well without a couple of them under your belt in a season, Nate hasn’t raced for a year. 

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