I'm injured.
Like any runner, I always seem to have some little niggling injury, but generally that hasn't stopped me from running. For me, more often than not, it's my hamstrings. Way back in 2015 I pulled a hamstring in a race, and it hasn't been the same since.
This year the injury progressed to a new level. I just couldn't seem to get better. I thought a long "break" over the summer where I went on a three-week walking trip with my wife would magically cure it, but it didn't. When I got back from my travels, I tried to run myself back into shape, and I'll let this graph tell the story of what happened next:
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| My last 120 days, in a graph |
Normally I run 6 miles on my easy days, with a couple days a week where I go longer for workouts and long runs. The green dots on this graph represent the length of my runs over the last four months. As you can see, at the end of the summer I was doing mostly 4-mile runs, with a few "longer" runs that would have previously counted as short runs. Around Day 50 on that graph, I tried to make 5 miles my new "short" distance, and that lasted exactly two days. You can see the lonely dot at 2.38 miles, just before the 60-day point, which represents when my leg decided to stop working.
I took three weeks off, and visited a physical therapist who diagnosed my condition as "pes anserine bursitis," an inflammation below the knee where three tendons join the shin. The prescription was rest, exercise and stretching the hamstrings, which I dutifully did.
I finally started running again around Day 75 of this graph, with a 2-mile run. I worked my way up to 3-mile runs, and eventually did a couple 4-milers, taking a day off between each run. More recently I've started running two days in a row. My hamstrings actually feel better than they have in years, but my pes anserine area still gets sore. I made this graph because it felt like I was finally running faster and farther, and I am. But not much faster or farther. To see the effect, you have to zoom in:
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| Zooming in to the last 32 days |
I fit a line to the distance (in green) and pace (in blue) of my runs over the last month, and as you can see, the distance gets slightly longer, while the pace gets slightly faster (lower pace is faster). In other words, progress is DAMNED slow. I'm going to try running 5 miles on Thursday before I head out of town for a week and a half. Don't worry, I won't push it -- I will stop if this turns out to be too much. But I think I'm turning a corner. I'm signed up for the Boston Marathon in April, and if I want to do more than run-walk the race, I need to be running 40-50 mile weeks, not 10-12 mile weeks. I'll keep stretching and strengthening my hamstrings, and gradually building distance and pace, and with any luck, I won't just be walking the Boston Marathon!
