Sunday, April 7, 2013

Stress Fracture 3.0


Well. I definitely have a stress fracture. Or at least a stress reaction, which I've seen described in my medical research (aka compulsive internet searches) as a "wannabe stress fracture." I shouldn't be surprised. This is actually the third time running has given me a stress fracture, although it's been about six years since the last one and I'd almost convinced myself that wearing the right shoes had solved the problem.
 
Nope.  
 
I really need to accept the fact that I am not a distance runner and that regularly running further than 8 miles at a time is just not good for my porous vegetarian bones.
  
Also, I should probably have been taking the calcium pills that I bought in bulk and let rot on the shelf. 
 
I have an appointment on Thursday to have this confirmed and get an official rehab schedule, but like I told Donnie, I'm basically a doctor so here is how I have arrived at this diagnosis:  
 
History of stress fracture: The first one came in early 2004. As soon as I learned to control my side stitches I felt this wild euphoria and immediately upped my mileage to 7-13 miles a day. Because I didn't have the base mileage, I wound up with a pretty severe stress fracture in my right femoral head and was on crutches for almost 12 weeks. The second one came in early 2007. It wasn't nearly as bad--a stress reaction on the left side that barely showed up on an x-ray. That time I was on crutches for about 6 weeks. After the second one, I had a really good physical therapist who told me that a leg length discrepancy was leading me to overcompensate. I went through months of strength training and got fitted for the right kind of shoes. And I've been running pain and injury-free for the better part of six years.
  
Current symptoms: The races that I had planned for the spring led me to increase both the duration and intensity of my runs. The pain started after a series of hill repeats on 3/25. I thought it was just adductor tightness until an interval workout on 3/28 left me limping. Now I feel stabbing pain when lifting my left leg or bending over to put on pants. I can sort of feel it from just walking, but really only when I'm wearing heels, which admittedly I shouldn't do given my current condition. I've been coming home from work and icing it and trying to restrict my movements as much as possible, all in the hope that by the time I see the doctor he'll say I'm out of the danger zone and can skip the crutches.
  
Eh, this is all probably TMI for the casual reader of this blog. The bottom line is, I'll probably be off running for a minimum of 8 weeks and a maximum of 16 weeks.
  
What does all this mean for Run 52?
  
First, I am committed to finishing this project. We will finish it. It might not happen in this calendar year like we had planned, but it will happen.
  
Second, not being able to run has left me with a huge expanse of time. How will I fill it? Hopefully with something more productive than watching endless episodes of Dance Moms and looking at Facebook. I hope to use this downtime to remind myself that there is more to life than running. There is more to me than running. Recently I've been turning down too many invitations and events because I have to run. I've been leaving work at 5:00pm on the dot to come home and run. I've left a stack of books on my night stand untouched.  I asked a friend to plan her bachelorette weekend around one of my races.  (Whoops, that last one seems pretty selfish now that I type it out!)  
 
So over the next eight weeks I'll probably have a few more afternoons like this one:
 
 

 





 





Which might not be so bad. 
 
 
-Kayla


 

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