Pilgrimage

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I made a pilgrimage to the spot of Spike's most recent injury above Santa Fe on Thursday night. I can only figure the injury occured because he was concentrating on the spectacular view and not his running.

-- Snorkel (daanielmeenehan@aol.com), July 22, 2000

Answers

Dan is right about the view being spectacular. In fact, I have a photograph I took during my run that is hanging on the wall in my living room.

Take a look at the USGS map for an idea of the terrain:

http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=35.7701&lon=- 105.8031&size=s&s=25M

I've thought a lot about how my injury happened. My theory is that it began with a slight tightness in my calf muscle. When I ran in Santa Fe, I compensated for the tightness by changing my running a bit. I think I was putting a bit more stress on the achilles tendon. It wouldn't really have caused trouble except the run was uphill for about 60 minutes. It ended up being too much for the tendon. It still might have been ok, except the next day I did another run that included some steep uphill. I ran at Bandellier National Monument and the first 10 minutes of the run was up the side of a canyon. The day after my Bandellier run, I did a short run (25- 30 minutes) on the streets of Santa Fe. About 15 minutes into the run my achilles tendon tightened up and I had to walk back.

When I got back to KC, I took a day off, then an easy day, then a couple more days off. I figured that would be enough. So, I went for a run on the river trails in Lawrence. I planned to do about 100 minutes. After 30 minutes, I began to notice a strange feeling (certainly not pain) in the upper part of the tendon/lower part of the calf muscle. By 45-50 minutes it began to hurt. After another few minutes, it hurt a lot and I had to walk/hobble back to the car for almost an hour.

The damage was done. For the next week I had trouble just walking. I spent as much time as possible icing the leg and trying to stay off it. It was not fun.

I set up a plan for recovering. I would not run for about 6 weeks. Even if the leg felt fine, I would not run. I didn't have any immediate running/orienteering plans, so it made sense to take it slow and easy rather than risking a too-soon-return to running. I rode my bike and, after some time, added "nordic tracking," to keep from losing condition.

After six weeks, I began some easy jogging. When I say easy, I mean it. I began with a session like this -- walk for a few blocks, then begin shuffling (slowly) for 3 minutes, then walk for a minute, and so on until I'd done about 20 minutes of running. I've gradually worked up to running continuously for 25 minutes, three days a week.

It might seem overly cautious. It might be. But, it might just be prudent. The injury was quite scary. It hurt and it made walking (even standing) painful. It was not just a nagging soreness or stiffness. I don't really think a slow/cautious recovery is a problem. I have been doing lots of alternative training (cycling and norid-tracking) to keep from losing -- and maybe even build -- base fitness.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), July 23, 2000.


Where has everybody gone?

-- Snorkel (danielmeenehan@aol.com), July 27, 2000.

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