Losing Faith, Staying Positive

This calf has really got me down! I can't believe how much I am suffering as a result of what seemed to be just a simple calf cramp that hit near the end of my long run a couple of Sundays ago. In fact, I am starting to doubt whether it is a cramp induced thing at all and wonder if I have some serious muscle damage going on. Naturally, my 30k race this coming weekend is in major jeopardy and I would be pressed to walk 3k at this point let alone get through ten times that distance.

I tried my best to stay off my leg all weekend and used a variety of icing and heat, as well as anti-inflammatory creams, to treat this issue. Each morning I'd wake up and cautiously step on my leg to find that the pain was not as bad as the night before, but within minutes the thing would tighten up and I'd be back to hobbling again. It hurts like a Mo-Fo to walk!

With all of that in mind I am keeping positive about the whole situation. After all, this is the risk one "runs" when signing up for races in advance. I also have that physio appointment for Wednesday morning (which was for my plantar fasciitis, but now will involve this problem for sho!) and I lucked into making another massage therapy appointment for right afterward. I am not actually holding out hope that I will be able to run, but stranger things have happened.

Speaking of stranger things I read Bart Yasso's My Life on the Run this weekend. I picked it up at the same time that I grabbed Chi Running. This was a super easy read and pretty entertaining. Bart Yasso has been through a lot of interesting runs throughout his life, and (spoil alert! spoil alert!) to read about his battle with Lyme disease and how it has pretty much ended his running career I count myself lucky because I know this calf issue will eventually get better and I'll be back on the road. Anyway, this was a good short read which I recommend. If it only took me two evenings to finish this book then most will blow through it over lunch given that I am the world's slowest reader.

On the Chi Running front, I have also read that book pretty extensively (can you tell I was on my ass all weekend?) and will give this a good go over the next weeks, months, years. The Chi Running philosophy speaks to me and makes sense on many levels. Specifically, I like that the focus in this technique is on the process and not the result. I think it will require significant concentration to do it right and will likely stop me from reading my Garmin every ten seconds, as I am want to do, thereby preventing me from pushing myself too much and ignoring my body. If one is to learn the Chi Running technique one must be very in tune with one's body, and I am a prime candidate for this much needed lesson. Also, I know a local running store has a guy who holds Chi Running clinics and I might consider taking this approach once I've had a chance to recover and digest the book a bit more. There are many exercises that one has to do before venturing out onto the roads, so I am a long way from the end (if there is an end, that is).

Now, back to healing...

How to Run Without Using Leg Muscles

So, I picked up the book Chi Running by Danny Dreyer from my local library and have had a scant opportunity to flip through it. I've been told that this is a decent book for someone who wants to learn how to run with minimal impact on the body, thereby reducing injury, stress, blah blah blah. I'm in for anything that will reduce injury so I will take any and all advice in an effort to develop a running style all my own. The one thing that immediately caught my eye as I meandered through the chapters is the author's contention that in chi running one pretty much doesn't need to use the leg muscles at all! If this is actually the case then it's nothing short of revolutionary and must be shouted from all available rooftops to anyone who will listen! In fact, this philosophy could lead to all sorts of other wonderful chi like things:

• chi thinking: the art of thinking without using ones brain
• chi eating: the art of digesting without using ones stomach
• chi reading: the art of reading without using the alphabet
• chi breathing: the art of breathing without using ones lungs
• chi working: the art of getting paid without doing anything at all
• chi shopping: the art of buying stuff without using any money
• chi parenting: the art of raising children without having any
• chi farting: the art of expelling gas without eating cauliflower
• chi dieting: the art of losing weight without reducing calorie intake or increasing exercise

You get the picture... Feel free to add your own dreams of chi somethings.

Given that my calf still hurts I'm definitely open to any running that doesn't actually require this muscle. As I gather more information on this wonderful concept of running while drinking overpriced tea I will try and report how it's working out for me. Perhaps I can learn enough in the next week to fake my way through the Around the Bay 30k!

Which brings me to this afternoon:

Alas the lesson in chi running was simply too short on this first day of the experiment. After work I prepared for my regular 7k run home and everything started off nice and normal. The weather was perfect, my backpack was not very heavy, and I felt otherwise great. I turned the old Garmin on and set off thinking of nothing but my running form and trying to relax as much as possible below the knees while focusing on keeping my core in the correct position. This was a good mental as well as physical exercise and I think I was seeing the light when disaster struck: at the 1.6km mark my left calf decided to stop me in my tracks. Same spot as last Sunday, the thing just tightened up and I simply could no longer keep running. So much for not needing my leg muscles!

I am quite concerned with this and thought that skipping my run on Wednesday would take care of the problem. Evidently my muscle has not fully recovered. It really feels like the effects of a really bad cramp are lingering much longer than expected. You know that feeling after a calf cramp that lasts well into the day (I'm talking about thos infrequent but agonizing middle of the night calf cramps where you wake up instantly and hold on for dear life gritting your teeth and pray that it doesn't get any worse). The post cramp lingeringness is continuing to last in my case and I am seriously bummed out about it. What does this mean for my race on the 29th? Will I still be able to do it? What do I do to get this thing to heal?

I did get the two Home Depot buckets out when I got home and filled one up with hot and the other with cold (plus ice cubes) to do the whole shock and awe thing, however my legs are just too long and the affected area was nowhere near the water line. I used the buckets on my PF foot and just put an icepack on the calf. Now all I can do is stay off of it for the next couple of days (goodbye long run on Sunday!) and hope it heals enough to let me get a short test run into the schedule prior to next weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but must admit that my faith is shaken and stirred at the moment.

On a slightly positive note, however, when I loaded up the Garmin stats I was shocked to find that I was running WAAAAAYYYYYY faster than I thought I was. In my efforts to concentrate on form I totally ignored the Garmin and so had no idea how fast I was moving. Based on feel I would have guessed somewhere in the 5:30 - 5:45/km range. Instead I completed the first kilometre in 4:37 and at was definitely still motoring along on the second split, which registered at 4:57 even though I hobbled along for a couple of hundred metres while secretly hoping that the calf muscle pain was just a false alarm and would sort itself out and let me run as planned. Anyway, the point is that the whole chi running thing is still a mystery, but it did make me run fast (perhaps too fast) and I will have to pay closer attention to this when next attempting this technique.

Garmin don't lie.