End of My Running?

Yes, it seems that my running days are nearing an end.  I started running in 1992 and except for several times when I suffered injuries, I have run continuously since.  Although, since my pace has slowed from the 8-minute mile pace I regularly hit in my 30s to slightly over a 10-minute pace, technically now I’m a jogger rather than a runner.

I have written previously of all the injuries I have incurred over the years of my running from which I had to recover.  Most injuries were unrelated to my running but rather something foolish or dumb that I had done that injured my back.  But this latest instance was neither foolish nor dumb but something normal.  Which makes it scarier.

Ironically, it was September 15^th, the very next morning after I had published a post about how I had been running indoors over the summer due to my intolerance of the heat.

That Monday morning, I had just gotten back from a 2.5 mile run at the gym when I looked in the backyard and saw probably thousands of magnolia leaves floating on the surface.  We had had severe storms overnight with high winds.  Still in my running clothes, I went out and started fishing the leaves out with my pool net on the end of my long pool pole.  Magnolia leaves float for a while so my goal was to get them out before they sank to the pool bottom.  When wet, magnolia leaves are very heavy.  Before I finished getting them all out, I noticed a pain in my left leg and hip.

Once I did finish, I went inside and immediately started having severe pain in my back.  In fact, there was no way I could orient my body that didn’t hurt and so after a couple of hours of enduring the pain, I took a strong prescription pain pill I had left over from when I had had my broken tooth extracted.  By the evening, thanks in part to the medicine no doubt, I was feeling better, but I knew I needed to go see my ortho doctor.

He started me on a steroid dose pack and after about two weeks, the pain had subsided and been replaced with a numbness on the outside of my left leg.  During this time, I was able to continue to walk at the gym and occasionally I tried to run to see if I could.  But I nearly tripped myself.  In talking with my doctor, I learned that I had foot drop, a nerve injury which prevented me fully from raising the front part of my left foot.  While walking, it was not apparent, but when I tried to run, it definitely was.  My doctor suggested some tests.

The images from an MRI, while showing some spinal stenosis, were inconclusive as to the cause of my leg numbness so my doctor recommended a nerve conduction study (NCS).  If you are not familiar with this test, the technician or doctor applies small electrical shocks to the skin to measure nerve function.  It hurt like HE double toothpick!  And it reminded me of the lab experiment I did in a high school biology class where we applied an electrical current from a battery to a frog’s leg and watched it contract violently.  My leg jerked painfully with each electrical pulse.

The diagnosis was that I had a pinched nerve, the nerve that ran down the outside of my left leg.  My doctor offered a spinal block to see if that would help but I had had those back when I had sciatica and got no relief.  So, I gave up running and just walked at the gym usually between 30 to 40 minutes.  And over time, the numbness gradually lessened.

Feeling optimistic, I began to run a few laps interspersed with my walking laps at the gym.  The foot drop seemed to have dissipated as well as I no longer tripped myself.  As my confidence in my recovery increased, I continued to add more running laps without any increase in leg numbness.

But then I noticed something.

I could not seem to run more than about five laps (0.5 mile) without having to stop and walk.  I seemed to have lost my running stamina.  At first, I tried to at least run five laps and then gradually to add additional laps to it.

Then in mid-February, having added a few extra laps each week, I had the goal of running at least one mile (10 laps).  I actually lost track of the time, something I used to do all the time when I ran and before I knew it, I had run for 15 minutes!  I felt like I had turned a corner and with continued progress could get back up to running 25 to 30 minutes as before.

But I could never repeat it.  In fact, the next time I tried, I could not run more than three laps without having to stop and walk.  I was most discouraged as I no longer seemed to have the stamina.

Now my weekly workout routine has changed from what it was previously when I did weight resistance twice a week and ran three times a week alternating back and forth.  My new routine is to twice a week do weight resistance, twice a week, do a 30-to-40-minute walk with two or three running laps interspersed throughout to get my heartrate up and finally, once a week just a steady 40-minute walk.

I have been doing this for several months now and have even added some Farmer’s Walks to my 40-minute walk at the gym to increase my heartrate.  If you are not familiar with that, it is an exercise where you walk some distance with a heavy weight in each hand (I guess like a farmer carrying two heavy pails of milk).  Back in my 40s when I was working out with my personal trainer, I held a 45-pound weight in each hand, but I only walked about 100 feet.  Now, almost three decades later, I can only manage 25-pound weights, but I make an entire lap at the gym (over 500 feet) four times over the 40-minute walk.

Once the weather got warm, I tried running around our lake to see if running outdoors would help me get my running stamina back, but still, I could not run more than about three minutes at a time before stopping to walk some.

So far, in spite of my setbacks, I have not given up on my running; it just now takes a new form.  I have finally recognized that my running days as I formerly knew them are over; something that has been very hard for me to accept.  But as long as I can at least get in several periods of running interspersed with walking, I will still feel like a runner!