My Debate With my Body

I must admit I am a bit stressed about my body’s ability to keep up with the rest of me.  I am confident that I can do this journey.  But I am not confident I will be able to do it comfortably and with great physical exuberance. 

Every good story has a protagonist, and this story has my right tibia.  I ran a marathon last October.  I stopped biking last July and devoted all workout time to preparing for the marathon.  I rationalized that if I was in good enough shape to run a marathon, I was in good enough shape to bike multiple miles a day.  I still think the logic works, but I had a little curve ball thrown in.  Five weeks before the marathon I was out on a sixteen mile run.  It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine and the perfect temp. I was feeling great; I was starting to really feel good about my conditioning for the upcoming marathon.  Twelve miles into the run I felt strange sensations in my right leg – from my foot to the top of my shin.  It would alternate between tingling, pain, and numbness.  I finished the run and spent the next week not running while trying to ignore the symptoms. 

The symptoms didn’t go away and I added significant swelling to my list.  After a week I made a visit to a sports medicine physician.  Diagnosis – stress fracture in my right tibia.   I discussed with the physician my intense desire to still run the marathon and to my surprise she completely understood.  She told me what to do and if I followed the regimen I should be able to run the marathon.  But there was a risk – without taking the time to properly recover I may refracture the tibia.  I didn’t care – I would take the risk – I wanted to run the marathon.  So for the next three weeks I wore a walking boot and worked out sporadically on an elliptical machine.  With a week to go before the marathon, I took off the walking boot and ran two to four miles a day.  Not great preparation for a marathon but I had built up enough of a base and I felt good – so I went for it. 

For those of you who have run a marathon, you know the great feeling: the excitement before the race, the fans encouraging you along the route, the adrenaline.  It was all wonderful - I was having a great run, and I was loving every minute of it.  All went well for twenty miles.  Somewhere in the 21^st mile cramps hit hard in my right leg and those strange sensations came back to my shin.  I finished the race – it was a bit ugly, but I finished. Two days later, a diagnosis confirmed I had indeed refractured my right tibia.

This time recovery was slow.  I was in a walking boot through the end of November and I was not allowed to even consider running until the end of February.  Finally in February I started trying to seriously condition for the bike ride.  It has been a long effort.  For some reason multiple hours on a treadmill feed me, and multiple hours on a stationary bike drive me crazy with tedium.  Conditions have not been great to bike outside this spring and with less than a week to go I have been out on my bike only a handful of times.  I would say my conditioning is not great but it is good enough.  More importantly, the symptoms of the tibia have improved dramatically, but the pain in the spot of the fracture still rears its ugly head.  And when it does, something happens to me emotionally.  It zaps my usually enthusiastic will to workout.  The good news - a couple weeks ago I had another MRI of my tibia.  It has fully healed.  Why the minor pain continues is a mystery.  Some days I wonder if it is psychosomatic.  I guess that would be the best I could hope for.  Just another good reason to not take myself too seriously!