There is nothing more damaging to a runner's psyche than fear of injury - it can keep you up at night wondering if that last long run was too long, if you have signed up for too many races, or if you need to traipse down to Sports Basement for another new pair of shoes yet….The biggest fear of all is the grandaddy of all injuries…the dreaded 'stress fracture'. This is the one where no amount of stretching, icing or ART (Active Muscle Relief) can do you any good; this is the one where only rest will work; this is the one when you can't jog through the pain or your risk fully fracturing the bone meaning an even longer lay off. It hangs over you as a disastrous, career ending situation, with visions of anorexic teenage girls on crutches due to cracks in their pelvis from heavy training and restricted calorie diets. It wasn't something I ever anticipated….
After a few years of racing I had finally developed a carefully thought out training regimen which seemed to work for me: speed day Tuesday, Tempo Thursday and long run at the weekend with fillers in between, some yoga and strength work added in here and there. Much as I loved running, I did notice I was getting a little bored with the self imposed tyranny of 'the schedule'. Sure I could break it up with fun company, new races, new goals, and by still demanding PR's of myself at 47, but truth be told it was getting old and the PR's were getting harder to eke out. I wondered if I should just give it up and run for fun?
As a mental health break I decided to go 'off schedule' for once. I had always done this at the end of a major race, but only for 4 weeks at most, and did other things, went to the gym, rode a bike and mostly indulged in 'when you feel like it running'. But now I decided I was going to take a whole summer off and that meant June - September. Summer vacation was going to be a ton of fun, I had friends to run with at weekends, and a cross country team I was working with who met at 7 pm every night on Castle Rock Road during the week. Then to make it even more fun I had the bright idea of offering 7 am training runs in gorgeous Castle Rock Park to any ambitious varsity types who wanted to add in 'two a days', or for kids who couldn't make the evening runs due to jobs etc.
Summer was suddenly wonderful again - very few kids came out in the morning, but those that did, and there were always one or two, taught me some great routes. True they were a little quiet in the mmornings, where as anyone who knows me soon learns that I am bouncing around like Tigger from 4.30 am onwards, definitely a morning gal. The runs intrigued me with their crazy names passed down from one runner to the next: Powerline because you get to the top of the hill and can virtually reach the power cables and feel you could zip line down them, Forgotten, because it changes every time you run it, or Lord of the Rings, for its Tolkien like foliage, and its vertiginous hill that challenged you just to stay in running motion.
There was also a new 'fear factor' on the trails, getting lost or not keeping up was a real possibility as were tarantulas and rattle snakes. Coming down Lord of the Rings I froze the first two times, side slipping my way down it was so steep; eventually, after watching kids happily trot down it I 'manned up' and learnt to gingerly jog down it. The kids were much more nimble on the trails, but I knew my less flexible middle age body might find getting up again to be a serious problem. I discovered you could run further and further, deep into the park on out and backs to Naked Laked and beyond that and that there really wasn't a lake, just a dried up bed of reeds. The park was cooler in the mornings and the sand and dust didn't fly in your face - just the promise of another beautiful day in California.
Returning to running in the evening was a challenge some days, I had never been an evening runner, and I really do like dinner! Knowing that Laurence and 50 or so other kids would be showing up in the evening kept me coming back and I could I could choose to run as fast or as slow as I felt. There was always a group of runners to match how my legs felt and watching them afterwards enjoy their watermelon fest at the end of the run, was a shared celebration of a great day of runnning on the trails.
Of course my legs did get sore, switching from the even pace of roads to lots of hills, uneven trails and the rocky, sandy down hills worked tendons I didn't know I had, my post tib tendon and achilles needed babying at times, but I learned which routes were flatter than others and picked the group and the route I felt like. It was liberating, fun and importantly it was spontaneous - for the first time I couldn't look at my calendar a month out and know what I would be running that day.
I didn't race all summer, and I didn't miss it one bit. I emerged at the end of it to try a 10K in downtown Walnut Creek, the race for Education. I had no expectations, it was more a diagnostic run to see where I was at and I wondered how my little experiment would leave me. I hadn't done any of the long tempo runs, I had done some distance at weekends, but mostly I had done runs of 3 - 8 miles on trails, some fast, some 13,14 or 15 minute mile paces run snail slow; none of it had been at any kind of race pace and I had no road based training to show me what speed I might run.
What emerged was interesting - my least favourite distance had clearly become my favourite distance and round about the 4 mile mark I really regretted having signed up for the 10k. A mile into the race I was feeling really good and noticed my pace as a good 15/20 seconds faster than usual, so I slowed it down, and by mile 2 started to see a good friend who was running the 5k and who runs about my pace draw up along side. She was puffing and panting and generally having what appeared to be a really hard time, I was worried, thought maybe she was having a bad day and gave her a big shout out of encouragement as she finally stepped ahead and passed me half a mile before the end of the race. I carried on cruising through the 5k mark still feeling very relaxed and at ease, and started the second loop. About the 4/5 mile mark I started to feel winded, and a combination of bored and uncomfortable that I hadn't felt for a long time, and suddenly didn't know what to do about. There was no one much on the course now, as the 10k is always small, so I trudged on disappointedly knowing my time was slowing. I finished and was not generally impressed with my effort. A nice surprise however was seeing my friend beaming on the podium with a new PR; she wasn't having a bad day at all, she had run really well and wasn't dying, she was just racing.
Turned out my 10k time was a modest PR despite my really slow second half; but my biggest surprise was to see that my 5k split was close to my 5k PR, and that had been with me deliberately taking it really easy. If I hadn't seen my time and slowed down at miles 2 and 3 I was on course for a really fast 5k time. Of course there is always an element of shouda woulda coulda. But my take home was that the summer on the trails had finally turned me from a marathoner to a 5k runner - if hills were speed work in disguise I had been inadvertently been doing 2/3 speed sessions a week that would have intimidated me on the flat but became a mental challenge to just stay upright on the trails. Conversely that long tempo work that I normally enjoyed had been eradicated and I had given out in the second half, running it much slower.
It was funny, I had spent a whole summer once on a hard training plan trying to run a 20 minute 5k and failed, only managed it finally the next spring after dropping out of the Boston Marathon at mile 18 and needing a redemption run 3 days later. But here was something beyond the scope of my goals, I never really thought I could get faster in a short race in my old age and here it was, the totally elusive 19 minutes, and it had just been dangled in my face, and then swiftly whipped away from me. I had definitely picked the wrong race that day - but it made me wonder about next summer…..
The weather began to cool, school returned and my thoughts then turned to the Fall; it was time to get back to traditional training and I was ready mentally. Now to turn this base of speed and strength into endurance again. I signed up for a schedule of three or four 10ks and half marathons, culminating in the Goofiest of all, training for a back to back half and full marathon to celebrate my lovely friend Karen's 50th Birthday in Florida.
I previewed the training plan by a few weeks to make sure my base was strong enough, and did some pace long runs at around 12 miles. My second or third week of these found me running happily down the old Iron Horse trail, a flat and lengthy path through Danville. We had run 5 easy, and the 5 pace had been much faster and easier than was needed - I was feelin fine! Then almost as soon as I started the easy cool down I noticed a pain on the top of one foot, like the tongue of the shoe needed adjusting. I left it, not wanting to break my friend's momentum and knew I could fix it soon as it was a short cool down. At home my foot was puffy and bruised feeling but I was not too alarmed. I rested it a day or so, and it felt a fair bit better, so I risked a short 3 miler and it was good. The next day was an opportunity to revisit the scenic 'Waterfall' a gorgeous 8 miler across the trails, and it was 4 miles into that run that every step felt like a large hot rock was simultaneously under and on top of my foot.
Medical opinion was not certain if it was bruising or perhaps the dreaded monster in the room, the 'stress fracture' but several weeks of hobbling in a boot a visit to the orthopod, finally confirmed it was so. My summer holiday running experiment had been interesting, surprising and had ended in tears. Most running advice suggest trails minimize pounding and are softer and gentler than road; they are NOT. Its true, you run slower on trail, sometimes because they are difficult but the torque on your feet and ankles is much greater, and some of the ground can feel as hard as asphalt if you run them in the summer. Also, 47 year olds take longer to recover from a run than 17 year olds….none of the students did 'two a days' every day; like them I should have eased into it more gradually. I was just having too much fun and have always been immoderate!
The big question of course is would I do it again. The answer is you bet, and there is always next summer, but I will ease into it a bit and pay more attention to recovery. Now its here, it turns out a stress fracture, isn't the end of the world, just a season. Its true spinning gives me brain blisters and deep water running is only fun with a friend, and whilst I like to think I would be more cautious next time I some how doubt it. Sadly I won't get to run Goofy but I hear there are some other things to do in Disney than run?
