It's the friction, stupid

When I first ran after the accident, I thought it was the bouncing of the boobs that bothered me. It wasn't. Instead, it was the friction.

Once I figured this out, I've managed to run shirtless a couple of times (with the added bonus of being able to show my chest off to my running friends), and shirt-wearing, and even sporting multiple layers other times. This is Northern Ohio, after all, where we go from air-conditioning to running the furnace during any given 24-hour period. When choosing a shirt on the cooler days, I look for something slightly soft, so that I don't feel it on my left nipple each time my foot hits the ground.

Running with friends helps. After any and all initial conversation and silliness, my misfortune is often soon forgotten, and all I need to do is keep up with everyone else. And since our groups have been getting bigger recently, the runs are as much fun as ever. 

Now, I believe that my setback has been overcome, and I have indeed "bounced back." 

Again.

Bouncing Back

It's with some amount of pride that I can say that whatever curveballs fate, karma, or plain stupidity throw at me, I am able to bounce back and return to running, that much older and wiser. Well, older, at least. This Big Comeback, like all comebacks, begins with the first step of the first run.

I am out the door. I don't know what will be in store for me today, but I don't plan to push the envelope too very much. Maybe one to three easy miles, tops. Wednesday's debacle caused me to miss my runs two days in a row, something I hadn't done for months. It's been a month, in fact, since I've missed even one day. I reach the street, and then I take that first (running) step.

Ouch. Second step. Ouch. And so on. My boobs are bouncing, and my left one, the one with the stitches, smarts. Bouncing boons is something a runner of my gender doesn't usually need to be concerned with. And this sort of 'bouncing back' isn't the type I thought would be much of a problem today.

Eventually, I slow down a little, and the pain seems to subside. I run only two very slow miles. That's enough bouncing for today. Maybe I'll be able to bounce back better tomorrow.

Lacerations and Contusions (warning: contains significant bodily injury porn)

 

Some questions probably come to mind right away: 1) Why begin with an image of Dan's mileage? and 2) Lacerations and Contusions? Huh??

The answer to the first question is easy. The first photo in a post usually shows up as an icon when a link to the post is displayed, and Dan didn't want his injury porn to show up like that, all over, willy-nilly. In fact, this is a good time to warn anyone who doesn't want to see bodily injury porn to bug out right now. Don't say you were not warned.

Still here? Good. Now, it's time to answer the second question.

It's 4:30, and Dan is pretty happy. He's gone through his morning routine, and it looks like he will be able to arrive early at Lake Medina, where he is to meet his running friends at 5:15. This may enable him to get an extra mile or so in, ala the Dan of Olde. He puts his stuff in the car but doesn't drive off right away. That's because of Nipper. 

Nipper, his robotic mower, is in the backyard, and even after taking some special measures, he spends too much time there and too little time doing the front. After sending him out on a special mission to do the front at this early hour, Dan realizes that Nipper is mowing the back despite these wishes. Dan decides to walk back there and physically take him to the front. He's done this before, but not in the dark.

Dan walks around the side of the house and spots Nipper, headlights and all, mowing a corner in the back. In a slight hurry (because he still wants to get those extra miles in), Dan begins to stride over to retrieve his wayward pet mower. That's when things begin to happen very quickly. Dan trips over the two-foot-high garden fence (the one that he should have been well aware of) and begins falling into the garden itself. But he's stopped by a three-foot-high metal fence post, the kind with three sides that are rather sharp at the top. The collision occurs on the left side of his chest.

His first thought is that he is completely impaled by the post. His second thought is that perhaps he's not impaled, but why does it hurt so much? And then: will he be able to even get up at all? He prefers not to be found here by his wife, Debbie when she wakes up in three hours or so.

After a couple of horizontal minutes, Dan somehow manages to get up and out of the garden. His next thought is that perhaps it's just a bruise (albeit a painful one), and he can probably still make it to the run on time. But instead of getting right into the car, he decides to perform a quick self-check in the bathroom mirror.

There's a quarter-sized hole in the running shirt, and some blood around it. Removal and disposal of the shirt (don't worry - he owns other running shirts) reveals a surprise. And not a good surprise. The laceration is deep, wide, thick, and long - about 9 inches long. It goes straight across his left pectoralis major, including the nipple. The pain isn't unbearable, and it's not bleeding a great deal, so Dan cleans it up and waits. He waits for the Cleveland Clinic Express Care Center to open, and for Debbie to wake up and take him.

Debbie takes good care of him and gets him to the hospital, where they transfer him to Emergency. They do a chest x-ray (to diagnose the contusions), give him an antibiotic IV, a tetanus shot, and about a billion stitches. The antiseptic and sewing of the sutures are pretty darn painful at times. But the Emergency Room Doc is friendly and talkative. He clearly enjoys his job.

Now sewn back together, Dan isn't so sure what to do with himself. Maybe go out for a run. But not today.

Read (or just scrolled) down this far? Okay, here's your porn.

In the hospital, just before the stitches

Looks like about 22 stitches

Registered

 Yes, I've gone and done it. I registered.

No, I don't mean to say that I registered for races (although I am indeed all-in for the Twin Sizzler and the Erie Marathon). The registration I'm referring to here is on the machine they erected in my neighborhood. It's a speed monitor that is intended to inform drivers of their current speed compared with the speed limit. When I see these things, I always try to run fast in order to have the machine report my own speed back to me.

The vast majority of the time, I fail to register at all. It's as if I'm invisible. I am not sure whether this is due to my lack of mass (compared with a motor vehicle), or my relatively slow speed (compared with a motor vehicle). I try to run fast(er) in case it's the latter reason.

Thus, I was quite surprised when the machine near me reported "5" as I approached. Whoa, I thought. I can run faster than that. I picked it up and brought my speed all the way up to "6".

My registration is complete.

Consistency

There is something to be said for consistency. I just don't know what. I'll let you know when I find out.

I ran nearly every day in February, March,, April, and now early May. I think the only days I have taken off were ones that required a great deal of traveling. I used to make it a point to take one or two days off per week. Then came my year-long running streak, which was followed by (but surely not related to) my Achilles surgery. Now, I'm back at it.

This is not to say that I don't have some easy days. I do. Lots of them, and they are very easy. After finishing last week with a flurry of miles, I can guess that tomorrow will be such a day.

A flurry of mileage to complete the week? Yes, and I made it to 60 weekly miles for the first time in a year. It's hard to believe that I used to be consistent about doing 60, 70, and more miles each and every week. It was really hard to get back to this level, and the reason also has to do with consistency.

You see, I am still not doing long runs. I define a long run as 18 miles, and nowadays I can only make it up to 12. Twelve is itself an improvement since it wasn't long ago that the most I could do is ten. But without 18-20 milers, I used to consistently do a long run a week. But no longer. Now, I have to be all the more consistent with my medium-length runs and with not missing any days.

I am going to try to keep my weekly mileage up here consistently for at least a while. And I'm also going to try to get back to doing long runs. Consistently.

You read it here first.

Run 4 Fun Race Report

"Nope."

Our Protagonist (let's call him 'Dan') had taken just one step out the door. The cold rain, which he thought he might be able to beat, had made itself known immediately, and Dan just as immediately went back inside his warm, dry hovel.

Down into the basement he goes. and onto the treadmill. He's been trying to avoid the mill this week, but he deems avoiding cold rain more important. He runs ten miles, probably more than he should have.

He runs so much this morning because he figures that the evening's Run 4 Fun may not be optimal due to further chances of cold rain. That's if it happens at all.

"Nope."

Dan steps outside before it's time to drive to Medina for the race. It's still raining and it's still cold. Dan almost, almost, decides not to make the trip at all. In spite of himself, he nevertheless gets into the car and begins driving south. 'I am gonna regret this,' he thinks. At least he can add, ran too hard in the morning to his other excuses for the day, such as it's cold and rainy, I cannot run so late at night, and I am sure to make a fool of myself, etc.

Run 4 Fun is a great little Friday evening 5K to benefit Medina City Schools. Dan hasn't run this particular race for ten years or more. He immediately bumps into old friends galore. It seems that his injury, combined with the Covid Pandemic have caused many of his old friends to become near strangers. It feels great for Dan to re-connect with so many of these great folks.

As he lines up with Harold Dravenstott, who has generously offered to stay with him during the race, Dan begins to feel like old times at the beginning of a race. Oh, the anticipation!

But then the run begins, and everything gets real. He and HD begin at an easy pace, yet he is almost immediately out of breath nonetheless. HD and Dan eventually settle into a 9 to 9:30 per mile pace, only slightly faster than planned.

Somehow, despite a slight slowdown, Dan maintains a nearly even pace and finishes in just under 29 minutes. About three months ago, Dan had run a nearly identical time at the Mardi Gras 5K in Panama City Beach. One may have hoped that Dan would have improved since then, but consider those excuses of his.

Some day, Dan will need to get into shape. Today is not that day.

Dan and HD near the finish, with Dan about to make his Big Move   photo credit: Beth Bugner

Double-Digits

Keen observers of this blog will note that there have been several posts of late in which I lament the fact that I can manage to run up to ten miles, but not much more than that. Things went a little better Saturday when I managed 12 decent miles with my friends. Today, just two days later, I ran another 12 miles, and they were pretty good as well. So maybe I'm pushing that boundary out a little. Just a little. For the rest of this week, I hope to run one or two more double-digit runs, although I won't expect them to be more than 12; maybe next week for that.

Double-digits come into play another way for me, however. Here's we're talking ten-minute pace. The vast majority of my running these days is well north of that. I have to really buckle down and concentrate to run faster, especially for any length of time. Nowadays, I call it a tempo run if I can manage to run three or more consecutive miles under ten. It doesn't happen real often. And I probably shouldn't push the pace so much on my longish runs of ten or more miles.

But I did today. I didn't even intend for it to happen; I only wanted 12 decent miles. But since I started so slow, I began trying to run each mile faster than the previous one, and I somehow succeeded. But this meant that by the time I got to mile 9, there was no place to go but sub-10 (in order to keep each mile faster than the one before). I got back to the car just as my watch said 12 miles, and just as it said that the final mile, at 9:15, was indeed my best.

The average pace for today's run wasn't outstanding, but all's swell that ends swell.

Running How I Feel

It's a nice concept, isn't it? Just run how you feel. Feeling just fine today? Go for it; run long and hard. Not doing quite so fine? Then don't push it; your body needed a break anyway. That's all well and good, and it's the best strategy when recovering from an injury. It's a good plan for preventing injuries as well. But it won't get you (or me, in this case), to the next level. For that, you have to push it past your comfort zone.

My own comfort zone has been up to, but not much more than, about ten miles. Yesterday, with the help of some much-appreciated friends, I did twelve decent miles on the Lester Rail Trail. All that was required of me (besides actually running) was the telling of a few semi-worn-out stories. It felt good (the run, not the stories), but I still have a long way to go.

On a related note, it's the same with my weekly mileage. It's been in the 50-55 range for quite some time now. Time to take it up to 60 and beyond. I'm not quite sure when that will occur, but it'll be in my sights starting tomorrow.

In order to provide some additional incentive to kick things up a notch, I just registered for the Erie Marathon, scheduled for September 11. I'd better start training.