Finally! Now more patience…

The patience finally paid off. I ran!! It was glorious. Also, very weird. My body forgot what it felt like to pound the pavement. The important thing is that my leg did great. There are times I take for granted what my body allows me to do when I’m healthy. Not being allowed to run for months is a great reminder of how much running means to me. Running a whole 5x30 seconds filled my heart with so much joy.

Mid last week, I reached the point of being fully clipped in while riding. My strength training was in a good place and my body felt solid. My body felt ready to run. Ironically, I ran for the first time in months, then hours later was told no running for two weeks. Post run, I headed to the periodontist office to have gums removed from the roof of my mouth and grafted to the front of my teeth where the gums had receded. That was Friday and I haven’t been allowed to do any training since then. Two weeks of no running or swimming. Tomorrow I can start walking again and easy riding. Not the setback I was hoping for but at least it was a setback not related to injury.     

In the meanwhile, I’m on a liquid diet which means I’m mastering my pureed soup skills. Pumpkin and red lentil soup, Cuban black bean soup, curry sweet potato and red lentil soup, split pea soup. So many red lentil soups. I made the mistake of buying a bunch of crunchy veggies before the surgery, so my morning smoothies are an interesting mixture of protein powder, nuts/seeds, bright fruits and greens. Cucumber, celery, cabbage, kale, spinach, broccoli, whatever I’ve got left over, goes into the blender.

The pain has been manageable, but it hurts the most while eating. Between taking the joy out of eating and not training, I’m going bonkers. My mouth has about two dozen stitches and I’m wearing a retainer to cover the roof of my mouth. At least I can lay flat while sleeping now. Anyway, that’s enough complaining. At least I know at the end of my mouth recovery, I have running to look forward to!

Patience is a Virtue

Recovery from the stress fracture in my tibia has been slow. Admittedly slower than I was expecting. However, this is the most patient I've ever been with an injury. I really struggled with the recovery from my bike crash in New Zealand. Since then, I have matured as a person and as an athlete to realize it's not the end of the world. Sure, it's a set back and frustrating at times but like all things, it too shall pass. 

Mid-November is when I got the diagnosis and then I went straight into a boot for over 6 weeks. Ah the struggles of a boot. First it's the struggle of finding a left shoe that's roughly the same height as the boot. Then comes different socks. Second, it was accepting the fact that I was creating muscular imbalances. I picked a horrible time to read a book talking about how many injuries stem from your feet. At times I'd be in a panic thinking how being in a boot was going to cause so many other injuries once I got out of it. Surely there was SOME exercise I could do to maintain some strength! Nope. I had to be completely immobilized since the stress fracture was where a muscle attached to the bone. 

The complete immobilization meant obviously no running and only walking in the boot. EXTREMELY limited strength training and only very short cycling sessions on the trainer in running shoes. I could swim but no pushing off the wall with that foot or any kicking. It mostly left swimming with a buoy and upper body lifting. Oh joy, just what I wanted... to really work on that upside down triangle look some more. 

Since I couldn't do much, I focused on what I could do. I used the time in the pool to really focus on technique. There was one aspect to my swim form I'd been putting off changing and I was determined to use that time to correct it. Which I'm happy to say I did. At least one positive came out of this experience. Strength training was mostly a challenge of how creative I could be with only doing exercises primarily laying down or sitting. 

I went through the entire holiday session with the boot: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. On January 2nd, I was finally given the green light from the doctor to take it off and slowly return to activity. A little over a week later I went to Norway which meant the only activity I could do was walking in snow. Then I got sick from my husband. All this slowed down my gradual return to training. 

And slow it's been. I did part of my swim warmup wearing SIM shorts so I could do a light kick. I added weight bearing (body weight) into strength training. I added 15 minute walks into my training schedule. From there, I swam more and more without a buoy. Eventually I got to actually hold small weights during exercises. Walks slowly increased in time and eventually pace. Cycling increased in time, with some intervals at an aerobic effort. Never higher. Still in running shoes.

Where am I today? Back to fully smashing myself in the pool. Strength training is almost back to the full range of exercises I can do. I was given lots of single leg/balance exercises from my PT. My walks are up to an hour at a steady pace. Now I've been given the ok from my PT to start slowly clipping in for parts of my trainer rides. Once I'm built up to 100% clipping in pain free, I can start the slow process of reintroducing running. 

My recovery can mostly be summed up as: SLOW. But I shall continue being patient and smart. Better safe than sorry.

Tibial Troubles

In October I got off my bike and handed in my bib at North Carolina 70.3. That was the plan since I'd been having leg pains and not running. Around that time I took over a month off running. Then I returned to super short run/walks 2-3 times a week. It was clear that although the pain was better, the problem was still there. After dealing with the hell that is doctors appointments, insurance and getting MRI approvals, I finally got a scan mid-November. 

Grade 2 stress fracture in my tibia. This was a shock. Let me give some background to explain why. End of July I first started feeling the pain in the middle of an 8 hour car drive. My sister went into labor so I did the quickest packing job of my life and headed to VA. The two days before included other traveling/driving and therefore less training. Obviously one does not get a stress fracture from constantly accelerating and braking in traffic. However, I felt it in my run the next day. The pain varied from there but never that bad. I thought surely a stress fracture would hurt more. My coach and PT all thought it was a soft tissue issue. 

In summary, this was the sequence of training around the onset of pain:
 - Friday: 40min treadmill run
 - Saturday: Strength + 1hour trainer ride
 - Sunday: Swim followed by running around like a headless chicken packing and driving to VA (had to skip my ride)
 - Monday - First run in which I felt pain

The month leading up to this I was running consistent, low mileage (around 15 mpw). I was eating a health, balanced diet with no weight swings. I certainly was not under-eating (not my style, I love food too much). After reviewing my MRI, the doctor asking about all of that plus:
 - How many marathons I'd run that year: zero
 - Changes in training: nope, normal moderate amounts of swimming, cycling and strength training
 - New or very old shoes: nope, normal rotating in replacements of same models
 - Skipped periods: nope

My doctor, coach and PT were all perplexed for the reason this happened. Sometimes I wonder if I accidentally hit my leg on something while frantically packing given how accident prone I am. I often have bruises or cuts I don't remember getting. I do have a clear memory of my husband telling me to slow down or I'd hurt myself. 

My doctor had blood drawn to test Vitamin D. I never heard back about results so I called. They said it was normal and I had to specifically ask for the number: 34.9ng/mL. The problem is "normal" ranges don't normally reflect the most recent medical research and certainly not research on athletes. I pulled out all my books and found all the research articles I could and as a female athlete I should be at least at 50ng/mL. My PT looked like she was going to smack me when I told her how low my level was. Really its not surprising it was low. I do 80% of my training before the sun comes up or indoors and 18% outside of the peak sun hours. I come from a family of vampires with a skin cancer history who are always lathered in sunscreen, coverups and under umbrellas. Aka I avoided the sun like the plague. All that said, low vitamin D was probably a contributing factor. 

Irrelevant of the cause, the end result was the same. Stress fracture. In a boot for 6+ weeks. I started my year being helicopters off Kilimanjaro (still a story for another time) and ended in a boot. That about sums up the love hate relationship I have with my body.