Run amigo run

Fall has just started. We love Fall for various reasons. I like it for the colored canopies and the long runs. This is also the home stretch of the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM). It’s just around the corner.

It is one of the better things I enrolled myself into – running a marathon this year. About 6 weeks to go before the big day – Oct 26^th. I have been training for several long months now.  I tried to follow a set schedule and by April got up to 30-35 miles/week including 14 milers on Sundays.  Then the usual hurdles started. Shoulders, calf muscles, hamstring, blisters, the perpetual cold….. I will spare the details.  By now, I got used to the pains and learnt how to avoid them. I set myself a decent goal time to complete the Marathon, decent for a first timer like me… until things started falling apart.

In June, I started getting acute pain in my left knee.  It was not continuous, the pain lasts only 5 to 10 mins. And then I would be alright for several days before the pain shows up again. But it was enough to scare me and slow down the training. It was almost a show stopper. The pain, when it showed up, was so severe that I couldn’t stand on my left leg, leave alone running.  Doctors checked out the knee and concluded that it’s not major to visit a sports specialist and I needed to take some rest. I stopped running for a month. The pain did not come back. I started running again, though not as serious/regular as before.  I thought I could slowly build it up to where I left. Running went well for couple of months.

And then another issue came up out of nowhere. This was just last week. I had a good run on a Friday morning, watched US Open, ate well and slept well that night. When I got up early on Saturday for a long run, I couldn’t stand up on my right foot. My right ankle/heel bone was hurting so much. It couldn’t take any weight. Bengay, cold packs, hot packs… nothing worked.  When we are so close to MCM, this kind of injury is definitely going to put me in a low gear.  Now, I was considering postponing my MCM registration for next year.  But again, there is no guarantee that I will run next year either. Because after training hard for the last 9 months, if injuries can stop me now, the same thing could happen next year.  So I decided to give it a shot anyway.

 I got reminded of something I read a while back: “If you run without sacrifice, you just jogged”. Injuries are part of our training. We have to learn to overcome them and keep going towards the goal. There are people who have more serious life threatening conditions and yet come out triumphant in these long distances.

I now have a revised goal for my marathon. Way off from what I had in mind in April. It might probably take quarter of a day or more, I don’t know. My goal now, is just be able to complete the Marathon. 

All my friends who are reading this, if you are running or want to run any distance, 5k, 10k, marathon or ultras, best of luck. You will hit certain walls all along but keep going.  In distance running, the only person you are competing against is yourself.  It could mean different things to different people. You push your own limits in the process.  At the end of the day, am sure you will be proud of what you did.

I will remember what Dean Karnazes once said:  “Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” More non-runners would have read this sentence about running than any other. It is one of the captions on the Starbucks cup.