Hurm.....Injured? Am I injured?......Hurm.

    So here I sit.  A couple of weeks ago when I got done with the "Eight Hours of Payne" non-event event, I had a slight pain in the outside of my left foot.  I didn't really think anything of it.  I had just ran a shit ton of miles so a little twinge in a body part wasn't unexpected.  The pain went away after a while anyway.  Perfectly fine and dandy. 
     I took a couple days off of running for some recovery and went back out for a four to five mile run around my neighborhood.  No problems.  Afterward I felt a little niggle in the spot that hurt after the big non-event.  I really didn't think anything of it.  The day after that I got about two miles from home on a post-work run and the niggle was back.  It was back and a little more bothersome.  I finished my route (which I was halfway done with anyway) and decided to give slack off on my running to let this heal before it snowballs into something worse. 
     Six days later, no problems from my left foot, I decide to hit it again.  Post work six miler: done.  Post work five miler:  piece of cake.  Post work five miler: hurm....maybe should have rested?  I just that small niggle creep up again.  I woke up the next morning and it felt fine.  I went to my gym and worked out.  Jumping switching lunges: fine. Weighted box step ups:  no problems.   Nothing.  Later that day.  Kind of a niggle.  What the hell?
     So Saturday, a group of us went to the Morgan Monroe State Forest with the plans to run the Three Lakes Trail.  I was kind of worried about the foot, but woke up with no pain in it.  So I decided to play it by ear.  I wanted to do two laps (each lap being 10 miles) and my friend Chris joined me. 
     The run started out fine.  My quads and glutes were experiencing delayed onset muscle soreness so the hills on this trail were tougher than I wanted.  We were cruising along and my foot was fine.  I decided the soft trail was just what the doctor ordered.  Pounding on concrete and asphalt aggravated the spot more than anything.  Eureka !!!  One more reason to not like road running.
     The day's run ended up being a twelve miler.  My legs were taxed from the previous day's weight work and I figured I could get a longer run on my day off in the middle of next week. My wife and I met up, said goodbye to our friends who wanted to do more miles, and we were off for home.
     While I was taking my socks off at home, I squeezed my foot where I was experiencing the here today gone tomorrow pain.  I immediately felt a sharp pain where I was squeezing.  Not good !!!  My foot felt fine otherwise, but when I squeezed it....Yipes !!!!  So, being the genius I am, I sat on the edge of the bed squeezing around the spot until I mentally mapped out the injured area and irritated the spot into hurting.  Hurm.
     My wife, who rolled her ankle on the run, was doing a cold water bath for her ankle.  When she was done, I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to do so for my foot.  Twenty minutes in a cold bath will cure it all.  Then we decide to go downtown.  Walking around and no problems.  I get home and give the spot a slight squeeze and.......yipe.   Not so bad, but I'm not happy.  "I'll just not run tomorrow," I decide.
     So on Sunday I wake up.  Foot check:  slight niggle when squeezed.  Hurm.  Later in the day I do the worse thing I can do with a running injury: Google foot injury symptoms.  Mentally, I decide to reject anything that says I have any kind of foot cancer.  I look for running injuries.  Find that midfoot strikers could develop stress fractures in their metatarsals. Or that it could be a bruised bone.. Hurm. 
    Then I make the decision that if I'm looking up symptoms or causes for this sharp pain, I better just make an appointment with my doctor.  Monday morning I secure an appointment with x-rays and make a Jesse Pinkman meme and post it to Facebook.

     This leads to a couple of discussions on the thread.  Then my friend Savannah starts asking about where it hurts and how.  She says that she recently tore a ligament in her foot and it hurt her way more than just a little injury.  She posted this pic along with her comments

   Torn Tendon ?  Could it be that?  Hurm....So then I start googling all the possible tendons on the side of the foot and symptoms of tearing or injury.  Most of the injuries involve loss of balance as a major indicator.  I didn't have this, so I'm back to stress fracture.  Then something in my head tells me that I have a doctors appointment and that I need to get the fuck off the internet.  I decided to listen to the voice.
     The next day I get an X-ray done.  My doctor runs me through a battery of movement drill and I pass each one.  I tell him that I'm not really bothered physically by the injury, except when I run on roads.  (or sit and pinch, poke, and squeeze the area minutes at a time.)  He takes me to see my x-rays and I'm walking around the hallways with only one shoe on.  He says my bones look fine in the problem area.  No cracks, breaks, splinters, fissures....nothing.
     So we go back to the examination room and he tells me that my somthinginlatinus tendon may have a tear in it, but it is most likely tendonitis.  He then proceeded to tell me that this is an injury most commonly seen in dancers.  (Dancers that do lots of leaps and jumps.)  I told him that the week prior to the injury I was practicing running down hills and trying to get faster at it.  Then how at the Paynetown event non-event I was trying to bolt down the hills in order to give my quads a rest.  This information seemed to back his diagnosis. 
    I was given two choices:  a pricey MRI scan to help determine for sure what is causing the sharp niggle or to try not running for two weeks, do ankle strengthening exercises, and take an anti-inflammatory. I chose the latter and he agreed with my decision.  He gave the go ahead to cross training and weight workouts but to avoid any running.  
     I'm relieved there aren't any bruised, fractured, or broken bones.  Tendonitis or a tear is something that can heal more quickly than a compromised bone.   I'm more disappointed in the fact that I have a "dancer's injury".  Shit, my last major injury was more commonly found in soccer and hockey players.  I'm amused and lucky that I've been avoiding typical runner's injuries but shit.  I'm really resisting the urge to squeeze the spot though.  I haven't had any niggles today.  Technically, I hadn't run two days prior to the doctor telling me not to run for two weeks so I'm kind of on the fourth day at the time of this writing.  Piece of cake.  My personal trainer wrote me a leg heavy program and didn't want me running too much while doing it anyway.  (just look at that optimistic silver lining attitude !!!)  So, I'm winning there.
     But still......hurm.

Eight Hours of Payne....or the "non-event" event

      A couple of months ago my friend Rick and I signed up to do a two man relay at an event called "Eight hours of Payne."  This event was an eight hour endurance run where a runner would run either a 10k course or a 5k course for eight hours.  Each runner can pick and choose which distance they wanted to run each lap with the idea of running 8 total hours.  The event was to be held at the Paynetown state recreational area.  I guess I say "was" because the event had to be cancelled due to the government shutdown.  The state park is obviously run by the state of Indiana, but the trails we were to run on are in the Hoosier National Forest.  The powers that be decided to revoke the land use permit that the race needed to be an event.
     The silver lining in the whole thing was the fact that one section of the course was on state property.  So the race coordinator decided to go ahead and be there with the intention of just kind of hanging out.  Salomon shoes had a tent there and had a wide assortment of shoes for people to try on.   There was a small group of people there to just support Bill (the race coordinator) and Ben (his son).
    I didn't really have any expectations going into the event.  When I signed up with Rick it was with the understanding that I my legs wouldn't be fresh because the same week I would be hiking in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park with my wife, Erin.  (A vacation that also was compromised by the government shutdown.  Originally, I wanted to do this event as a solo runner but my wife talked me out of it.  Then Rick approached me to do a 2fer.)  He reassured me that he wasn't in it to win it and just wanted to be a part of the event. This took the pressure off to hold back during my vacation for the event.
     So anyway, back to the event.  I guess my game plan was to run four laps.  Twenty four miles was about what I would have run partnering with Rick in the two man relay.  So that was my primary goal.  The idea of doing a distance personal record was there, but only if I was feeling good about it.  I had already run about 20 miles and hiked about 30 already in the week, so a PR distance goal was a long shot.
      Erin talked me into trying a pair of the Salomon lab shoes.  A pretty minimalist shoe that had a pretty good tread on them.  I always wear Altras and love them.  Altras have a very roomy toe box that these Salomons didn't have.  I figured I would wear them for a lap (10k or six miles in american) and put on my beloved Altra Lone Peak 1.5's.   
     We started running at 9am and everything was good.  The running groups thinned out while people rushed ahead of me and others stayed behind.  I quickly found myself in a familiar situation: by myself.  It was kind of strange.  I expected to run with people but I seemed to be in a pace limbo between packs.  Oh, well.
      I've run this trail dozens of times so I knew what to expect.  It's constant uphills and downhills with no real flats anywhere.  The first six miles just kind of cruised by and I kept a lookout for a part of the course that was a junction in the trail that I was unfamiliar with.  For some reason, I was real worried about missing that turn.  I eventually came upon it and went up and followed the flour trail markings down and then a turn and then another.  Then I lost the markings and had to make a 50/50 decision.  Turns out I made the wrong choice and ran downhill about a quarter mile til I came to the lake.  "Well, shit, this can't be right,"  I muttered to myself and headed back up the hill.
     I saw two guys at the same junction trying to decide which way to go.  "Not this way," I called out to them.  I caught up to them and we went down the other way.  It was only a couple of hundred yards to the parking lot and the completion of the first lap.  I was at an extra half mile or so after the first lap and the second "event" in a row that I had gotten lost.  I got skills.
       I came to the parking lot and gave Ben a low five.  The salomon rep asked how I liked the shoes and I had positive things to say about them.  The traction was great and I hadn't really had any problems.  The lace system is cool.  They are similar to the Nathan "never tie" laces that I use on my Altras.  You don't tie them as much as you pull them up and they "lock in" which are great because then you don't have to worry about your laces becoming untied.  I decided to keep the shoes on for another lap.
      The second lap was pretty uneventful.  The coolest thing to happen was that all of a sudden several miles into the lap the forest's bird population suddenly came alive.  All kinds of birds were waking up and calling out in various chirps and songs.  The birds were silent and seemingly non-existant during the first lap.  It was pretty awesome.
  So anyway....the second lap:  Up,down,up,down. I had read the book Chi-Running on vacation and had been trying to apply some of the principles from the book.  I was basically going to concentrate on form.  Keep my posture erect without slouching and keep a steady cadence.  Some of the things in the book were useful and some weren't.  (It's a quick read but the author tries to oversell the "Chi-running" as a brand which comes off as gimmicky.) So far in the day, experimenting with with different stride lengths, the different angles I can lean, and keeping my cadence constant were keeping the run interesting.
     My pinkie toe was starting to rub in the shoe a little.  This was no surprise.  (My left pinky toe kind of sticks out a little ever since I broke it running a trail in vibram five fingers last year.) I came to the parking lot and when the Salomon rep asked me how things were going I told him about the toe issue but didn't really make a bid deal of it.  I don't remember much of this pit stop.   Two laps down and onto the next one.
     About a mile and a half into the next lap I caught a glimpse of two runners coming up from the back fast.  I kind of skittled over so they could pass and saw that one of the runners was Ben.  I kept pace with the two for a little while and Ben asked about the trip my wife and I took.  This exchange didn't last very long though.  I couldn't keep their pace so I slowed down so I could conserve energy .  I was only about half way through the day's goal and trying to keep up with these two would have thrown that plan in jeopardy. (Not that I could sustain their pace anyway)
     Things were going smoothly and then at about the 14 mile mark or so the salomon shoes started constricting on me.  Every downhill I went down my toenails just started to grind into the shoe.  And by grind I mean it felt like the shoes were peeling my toenails up and back.  It fucking hurt !!!  The miles started to slowly tick by with the pain happening on the downhills and then spreading to the uphills too.  Good lord this sucked so much balls !!!  At about mile 16, I started to check out the trail debris situation to see if taking the shoes off and just running in socks was an option.  Small twigs and some acorns littered a good portion of the trail.  "I'm fucked for the next two miles," I thought to myself.  Then I remembered that I ran an extra half  mile and that it would be two and a half miles until I could get the shoes off.  "Man, I'm fucked for the next two and a half miles !!!"   Ugh.....I can only guess that my feet swelled just enough that the shoe became too tight.  I reached down and loosened the laces.  It helped some but not much. 
     I finally reached the turn from the main trail that lead to the parking lot.  I couldn't wait to get out of these shoes !!!  I caught up to an older runner and he asked how I was doing.  I told him the tale about the sudden constricting shoe phenomenon and he laughed.  He had been running with a thirty pound weight vest on.  He told me why but I don't remember the reason anymore.  At any rate, we came upon the clearing and I hoped the salomon rep wasn't around to ask me what I thought of the shoes.
     I saw my Altras under the salomon table and ripped off the shoes to put on my trusty pair.  Immediate satisfaction !!!!  Oh lord Jeebus !!!  It was like I put on shoes made from the hair of angelic cloud kittens !!!    Erin was at the aid station and asked what I needed.  At this point I needed to fill up the bladder of my camelbak so we skittered to my car, thus avoiding the shoe rep.  She asked how I was doing and I mostly complained about the shoes.  We filled the bladder and I ate a larabar or two or something.  The rep found me and asked me about the shoes.  I told them that they just squeezed up on me.  He made mention of the Altras bigger toe box, but that was about all I can remember.  (Boy, I was more civilized than I thought I would have been.) Then I was off for lap number 4.
     Lord, I felt so much better now !!!  My pace and my spirits picked up and I was back in business.  I could only guess that me and those salomon shoes were only good for 12 miles.  At any rate, this was a happy accident to make the fourth lap all rainbows and unicorns.  My first goal was going to be accomplished.  I had about five miles left to do it, but I felt great at this point.   My quads were getting a little fatigued but I was trying to run downhill loosely to help alleviate their workload.
     I was about three miles in and coming right towards me was Ben.  He had run the course backwards to run with me.  How cool was that !?!?! After running solo all day it was great to have him there.  I must admit I wasn't much of a conversationalist at this point. I can't remember two words I said to him.  At one point we came upon our friend Christy and we high fived each other.  She was looking good and strong.
     "This hill is where Paynetown PR's go to die,"  Ben said as I shifted from running to an aggressive hike to get up the last hill til the turnoff.  It was at about this time that I knew a fifth loop was in the cards and I wanted to conserve my legs.  We ran all the way to the parking lot making this the best lap of the day so far.
     Another uneventful parking lot pit stop and I was off for lap five.  Everything was going smoothly after changing shoes and I was looking forward to this lap.  I got up the whitetail trail hill and coasted down to the switchbacks and then up the long incline to the 10k/5k split off.  I was doing a decent effort and then somewhere around mile 27 my tendons started to ache.  My hamstrings and calves just got a little too tight and were starting to effect my tendons.  My pace was starting to suffer and I stopped to stretch here and there.
     Coming down one of the switchbacks, I saw an amazing bright green snake.  It was about a foot and a half long and I stopped to check it out.  Of all the times to not have my camera on me !!!  I nudged at its tail to get it off the trail but it wasn't moving.  Aw, well.  I continued down the switchback and back up the other one on the other side.
     I finished the lap and my pace dropped considerably.  I told Erin I wanted to do a distance PR and that I was going to do a 5k lap.  Starting the trail again I passed the 50k point and knew I could stop there and be done.  My tendons were aching but my ego started to take over.  "It's only a 5k, you can do that,"  my ego told me.  My ego can be a bad influence and an asshole, I decided.  So I kept at it.  When I came to the split I remembered that the 5k trail is mostly uphill.  I got halfway up the first part of the hill to a small flat section that only led to more uphill.  Shit.  It might have been easier to run the 10k trail again.  My tendons ached and I cursed myself for letting my ego make this decision.  Ugh, what a fool.
     I pushed through those last three miles and didn't feel very strong about it.  I came to the parking lot and, for the first time all day, it was empty.  I reset my Garmin so I wouldn't be tempted to go out again.  33.44 miles and over 6,100 ft of elevation gain for the day.  I had been at it for about six hours and forty five minutes and knew I had more time to get another lap in.  Physically, it would have been the dumbest decision ever.  Luckily the tendon pain I was experiencing was loud enough to drown out my ego's other bad idea of going out for another lap.  I walked down the parking lot hoping that my legs would loosen up and ease the tension in my tendons.  Erin grabbed me a coconut water and I chugged half of it down.  Bill came up and called me an "animal".
     "I'm a moron," I said, correcting him.  He disagreed.  Bill's a good guy.
     I stretched and walked.  Endorphins and other things were starting to kick in.  Oddly it felt like I was going to cry for a second.  I walked to my car and leaned back on the hood and started seeing a dozen tiny little pinwheels twisting at the scene before me.  "Fuck....I'm having an acid flashback?"  I thought to myself.  Oh, boy.   This is getting weird.  Then it stopped after about 20 seconds or so.
     I went back to the tent area and people were back from wherever they disappeared to.  I sat down and just kind of zoned out.  I guess endorphins were kicking in but I felt an amazing calm overcome me.  I don't know if I was smiling on the outside but I definitely was on the inside.  It was a great feeling.  My friend Heather sat down on the ground next to me and we chatted a little.  I was just enjoying the moment and the accomplishment.  My legs loosened up and the tendon pain subsided.  Some group pictures were taken and I felt well enough to drive home.
     Looking back, I didn't finish as strong as I would have liked.  Things started to fall apart at about the 27 mile mark.  I have no idea why.  It's possible that the week's hiking and running had a hand in it.  At about that point I would have been at about the 77 mile mark for the week.  I would have like to finished my PR distance run a lot stronger than I did.  But I think the most valuable lesson I learned this day was that I need to ignore my ego a lot better in the future.  Risking my physical well being for a small amount of glory was a pretty foolish thing to do.  Luckily I managed to get through the day without any major injuries.  My recovery was fast and had no real case of delayed onset muscle soreness either.  I guess what I'm trying to say is:  I can't wait to do it all again next year !!!

Vacation to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park (or how the government shut down nature and we became disciples of civil disobedience)

     Months ago, my wife and I decided to book a vacation and visit the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.  Little did we know that the federal government, in all it's infinite wisdom and glory, would get all fucking dysfunctional and close down.  This totally affected our plans of glorious hiking and trail running in the mountains of Tennessee.  Being just as stubborn as those dickheads in Washington D.C., the wife and I chose to go ahead with our plan and make the best of it.  Mostly because if we didn't; the terrorists would win.
     I have never been to this national park so I had no expectations.  I was severely disappointed that all the daydreaming of trail running in the mountains was to be about as close as I could get to actually trail running in the mountains though.  Days before we were to leave Erin, my wife, took to the internet and found some promising things to do though.
    I scoured the internets and found some great places too.  Great places that were all in the park.  Or great trails that were out and backs with a total distance of a half mile.  The day before we were to leave I slipped into the library and checked out some books about hiking in Tennessee.
     So then we were off.  On the drive, I discovered that one of the books I got was for the wrong region and the other two focused on the park.  "A" for effort, but an "F" for execution.  It turns out Erin, my wife, found a pretty cool place in North Carolina called Pisgah National Forest.  Technically it would be "shut down" as well but since there are so many roads in the area, it was impossible to enforce.  This sounded perfect and we were off for adventure !!!
     The way there was a single lane dirt road that winded up the mountain side and when we got to the trailhead it was super foggy.

     We took the trail up and around until we came to a junction that led to the Appalachian Trail !!!  This was going to be awesome.

  

     This portion of the AT was either all uphills and downhills.  No flats whatsoever.  The fog made the run a real awesome experience.  I hadn't run inclines like this since Erin and I were in Yellowstone National Park last year.  Just when I thought a hill was done, it would take a turn and continue to go on for several hundred more feet !!!  Then the decline part of every incline went on for for a long while too.  Quad killing awesomeness !!!
     I did about 12 miles total and, according to my Garmin watch, it took forever.  I loved every minute of it.  During the run I made a habit of running up a hill and then turning around to go down the way I came until I found Erin and then turned around to retake the hill.  It was a good system to keep close to her and get a good run in.  Overall, it was about 3,400 feet of elevation gain for the out and back that I did.  At times I was grinning from ear to ear and loved every minute of it.

    

    When we returned to Gatlinburg we stopped in a local outfitter store to check it out.  While there, Erin struck up a conversation with one of the employees who was also a trail runner.  He gave us some advice about the park.  It turns out there were some parking areas that the park rangers had to open up because people were parking unsafely along the road.  Eureka !!!
     The next morning we headed for the "closed" Gatlinburg trail.  It was a two mile out and back and it was an easy trail.  I did about 4 laps of it for a total of eight and a half miles.  We were trying to be conservative since we wanted to hike later in the day.  This trail runs by a park ranger station.  On one of my laps a ranger drove by in a SUV and I thought "Uh-oh" but he just smiled and waved at me as he drove by.  I smiled and waved back.  Totally awesome.

     We headed for the Newfound Gap area that afternoon and for the rest of the vacation.  The main way to the Appalachian trail had a street barrel barrier thing standing in the middle of it.  There was a note saying that the trail was closed and to expect a delayed response if you choose to ignore the barrier and break you leg somewhere up the trail.  We decided to take our chances and go enjoy some nature.  We switched up hikes going one direction to the chimney tops one day.  And then to a site called Charlie's Bunion the next.

     Overall, I was really happy with our vacation.  Luckily the Great Smokey Mountains National Park has a major highway running through it so it is near impossible to shut down.  I must admit that my hopes were crushed when the pinheads in Washington D.C. were going to effect our plans.  Luckily civil disobedience is still alive and well in the land so we got to appreciate the natural beauty of one of the most gorgeous places in the world.

1,000 mile mark

     So I hit the thousand mile marker for this year.  This is something, at the beginning of the year, I wouldn't have thought possible.  I spent most of the first three months of this year with a diagnosis of athletic pubalgia.  In simple terms, I had a soft tissue injury in my groin area.  More specifically I had small micro-tears in the tissue that connect my abdominal muscles to the front of my pelvic bone.  I couldn't run twelve feet without sharp pain occurring in my lower abdomen.
    Sometimes the pain would go away after a hundred yards or so and I'd continue my run.  When I had runs like these I would have the shooting, sharp pains tenfold about twenty to thirty minutes after the run was finished.
     I got this injury sometime late last September.  I went on a long run in Brown County State Park and around the twenty mile mark my adductor muscles (especially the one in my right leg) got extremely tight.  As I was running up the Hesitation Point trail, I stubbed my toe on a rock which pitched me forward.  When this happened my back bent backward and I overstretched my abdominal muscles.  This movement combined with a real tight adductor muscle caused an unknown amount of minitears along the pelvic bone where a lot of connective tissue happily live.  I yelped at the sharp pain and called it a day.
     Then I got rearended in an automobile accident about a week later.  A few days after the accident,  I ran the Knobstone half marathon and I injured my right foot.  This was basically an overuse injury.  So I couldn't run for the next couple of weeks.  All the while the more serious injury was present but kind of in the background.  I couldn't run because of my lame foot so the injury was never irritated.  After three weeks, I started to slowly get back into running.
     By this time, the Tecumseh Trail marathon was coming up and I went on a long run at the Paynetown SRA to see if the marathon was even doable.  After about ten miles my adductor seized up and I had pains going from the back of my knees to my belly button.  Not good.  Luckily I was able to defer that race entry til the next year.  The injury was still present or reoccurring after a month.  Also, not good.
     So I went to Dr. Michael LaGrange (a local family medicine/ sports medicine doctor).  He diagnosed me with athletic pubalgia.  I was prescribed anti-inflamatories and physical therapy. I went into physical therapy with the knowledge that if it didn't work surgery might have to be an option.  Physical therapy started in January and, something I didn't know at the time, would last for three months.  Every Wednesday I would go and have my abdomen stretched and then I slowly progressed to balance exercises and then to strength building exercises.  Every other week I would come home with a sheet or two of things to do that would strengthen my core muscles.  Some of the exercises would trigger pain, others not.  Some of the simpler planks would trigger pain while more difficult plank exercises wouldn't.  The therapists were perplexed.
     I would diligently do the exercises.  Every morning I would wake up and do some before work.  My boss gave me permission to do sets at work if time allowed.  I would do more exercises after work.  Then on Wednesdays I would get new things or modifications of old ones.  I started to progress and heal quickly.  The therapists even commented that I was a fast healer.  They did caution me that rest was just as important to the injury as the exercises I was doing.  My motivation was to avoid surgery at all costs.
     So this was my routine at the beginning of the year.  In the spring I started to do slight jogs.  If I had a small twinge of the pain, I would stop.  Some days I would run a mile, other days I would run ten feet.  Eventually I worked my way up to a mile every other day.  Then I made it to two and then three pain free miles.  
     It was around this time that I started heart rate training.  I would run but keep my heart rate under 145 beats per minute.  If I was running too fast my heart rate monitor would beep and I would have to slow down or even walk. but mostly walk.  My aerobic threshold was super low.  Which was good because this new way of training kept me from overexerting my healing body.  I slowly rebuilt my endurance in a new way and was soon running for an hour to an hour and a half.  The heart rate training kept me at a snail's pace but I was seeing improvements.  My pace was increasing but my heart rate was staying the same.
     A few weeks into running and at the beginning of heart rate training my therapists discharged me.  They put me through a battery of tests and were satisfied with my progress.  It was strange.  I spent every Wednesday for the first three months of the year going to see them at ten a.m.  And then I was done.  I graduated.  What was I to do?  Go for a run !!!
     This injury was a game changer for me.  I realized that I liked trail running enough that I didn't even flinch when it came to the work needed to get myself back to running.  I never thought twice about not doing the work.  I couldn't run and I wanted to run. (I also wanted to avoid surgery)  I wanted to be on the trails in nature.  I never thought of what I did as work.  In a way the exercises were medicine.  Now I see them as preventive medicine and I'm a better runner for continuing to do them.
     I've been thinking about those first few months at the beginning of the year a lot this past day.  I've run a thousand miles since then.  In those miles I've run two half-marathons, a full marathon, and a 50k ultramarathon.  Training weeks included twenty or more mile long runs in 1000% humidity.  During some of these runs, which would have been miserable for me a year ago, I would find myself smiling.  I was and am happy to be doing what I'm doing. 
    Would I go back and do it over again?  If I could avoid that injury all together, would I?    The injury, the physical therapy, the frustration, and fear.  I think I would.  That experience has made me a stronger person both mentally and physically.   I've changed my eating habits to make myself a healthier person and not just a fit person.   I am grateful for that injury though I would never have thought I would think that about it then.