My Last Run?

In 2015, I wrote about how I originally got started running and some of the injuries I had incurred over the years that limited my ability to run.  In 2022, I wrote about how I had been running for 30 years, occasionally participating in a race, but mostly just running around the lake in our subdivision.  Little did I know at that time that 2023 would be the start of several health issues that would present their own challenges for me to be able to run.

The first occurred in the spring of 2023 while I was doing some plumbing repair under a bathroom sink. Sitting on the floor, I lifted out a heavy box from under the sink to access the pipes.  When I stood up, I knew I had done something to my back which made it painful to walk.  Over twenty years ago, I had had back surgery to repair a ruptured disc and it scared me to think that doing something as simple as this could reaggravate that pain. Fortunately, I was able to get into my ortho doctor quickly and with a steroid shot in my back and a few days of taking it easy, I was fully recovered and back to running.

Then last fall, I was trying to repair the three broken fence posts that kept causing our fence to fall over into our backyard (note the propped up boards holding it up).  In hindsight, I should not have tried to do it by myself.  Again, sitting on the ground, I was lifting the post that had sheared off at the ground to attach a bracket to re-secure it to the portion of the post still set in concrete.  As I walked back to my yard to get some tools, I noticed I was having a little trouble walking.  After performing a similar repair on the second fence post, I began to have pain in my back and leg.

That night, the pain got so intense when I went to bed, I could not lay in any position without significant pain.  I ended up taking one of my beefed-up pain pills that I had gotten for when I had my broken tooth extracted.  A few days later, I was back at my ortho doctor.  This time he gave me a steroid dose pack rather than a shot and prescribed daily usage of an OTC anti-inflammatory drug.  After having been cured in less than a week from my springtime back injury, I was discouraged that my recovery this time was so slow.  While the back pain did resolve itself after a few weeks, I still had a numbness on the top of my left thigh that wasn’t painful but irritating.

After Christmas, even though not fully recovered, I began to build back up my running and by mid-January, I was back up to running my regular three miles.  To celebrate that first full run in months, I sprinted the last lap at the gym.  Big mistake.  That night, I was back in pain (pun intended).

This time, having seen the ortho doctor three times, he suggested I have an MRI.  It revealed a number of anomalies and disc degenerations but thankfully did not rise to the level of warranting back surgery again.  He suggested physical therapy (PT) which I did for three weeks.  I continued the daily exercises after finishing the PT but then began to notice my hips hurting.  Thinking I was doing something incorrectly, I stopped the exercises.  But the hip pain did not go away, and it hurt enough to even limit my walking.

Concurrent with my back and leg pain, I had been having an aggravating GI problem.  At first, it was thought to be due to the four rounds of antibiotics I had taken to relieve my tooth pain before it was finally discovered that the tooth was cracked in half and had to be extracted.  Sometimes antibiotics can kill off the good flora in your gut leaving the bad kind to proliferate.  But this was proven wrong.

With that ruled out, the tentative diagnosis was I was suffering from colitis.  The only way to conclusively confirm this was to take a biopsy of tissue as a part of a colonoscopy.  Ugh, I had just had my 10-year colonoscopy in October of 2023.

While researching what causes colitis and what such a diagnosis would mean in terms of treatments and cures, I learned that overuse of anti-inflammatory agents could cause it.  Wow this could mean all my back troubles caused my GI problem.  I also discovered that colitis could manifest itself with arthritis in the hips.  That could certainly explain my hip pain.  I also learned that eliminating certain things from your diet (caffeine, dairy, whole wheat) could minimize the symptoms which I did give up.

It took a while to get in for the colonoscopy and the day before, I grudgingly went through the awful prep again.  The only good thing about a colonoscopy is you sleep through it and then when you wake up, it’s all over.  Interestingly, as I walked out of the surgery center, I noticed my hips were no longer hurting.  Apparently, the prep alone had eliminated the arthritis, which made it that much less of a regrettable experience (thankfully the hip relief has not proven temporary).

For a time, I thought I would have to give up running altogether.  In fact, my Physical Therapist told me that with my back injuries, it might be too hard to return to running.  He said if I did start back, to at least run indoors on a cushioned track.

Being pain-free, I began to walk farther and farther at the gym. Walking has never been a favorite form of exercise for me as I learned long ago that it takes me almost twice as long to cover the same distance and, in the end, I only burn about 60% as many calories as I would have burned running that distance.  And with walking, I never get my heart rate up into the healthy vigorous or peak range that I achieve with running.

On days I didn’t go to the gym, I also started walking down to and around the lake.  Here, it was really hard not to run as this had been my regular running course for almost 25 years.  As I walked, I naturally thought about running again.

Following the PT’s advice, I started adding some running laps interspersed with my walking laps at the gym.  The track at our gym is 1/10 mile long so it was easy to keep up with the running distance I added.  I slowly built up my distance running to hopefully avoid the lactic acid burn.  Once I had worked up to running 1-mile intervals, I decided to start off running adding additional laps incrementally to my running and then walking after that.  I also bought some new running shoes and sports insoles to help prevent any re-injury.

With the new shoes, I increased my running distance to 1.5 miles, next 1.7 miles, and then finally 2 miles.

On the 4^th of July, in spite of the heat, I decided to run outside for the first time.  That day, I managed to run almost 2.5 miles.  I repeated that two days later and then on the 10^th of July, I ran the almost 3-mile loop I have run for almost 25 years down to and around our lake and back.

Five days later, I had a really special treat to get to run with my oldest son when he was in town.  He too is a runner, but a much faster one than me.  He kindly obliged me to run with me at my slower pace for the same loop, before turning around at our house to run another lap around the lake by himself at his faster pace.

With these two runs, I finally felt like I had fully overcome my health issues and re-established my regular running routine.  It had taken over a year from my first injury in the spring of 2023.  But I knew for the first time that my running days were not over but could continue!