Injuries

I’ve had my fair share of injuries over the years. Wrestling in my younger years gave me two separated shoulders, a wrenched knee, and a cauliflower ear. Bloody noses and bruises were too frequent to note. Running has also given me injuries, but all of them have been muscles and tendons; nothing skeletal. I’ve pulled muscles or tendons in my buttocks, back, neck, calves, hamstrings, and ankles. Yeah, you’d think it would only be the legs. There have been plenty of skinned knees and bloody palms from falls, and countless blisters on the feet, but no occasions that are memorable given the high frequency.

Now that I am 60 I find that these running injuries have become more frequent. It seems as if I am injured for more weeks of the year than I am healthy. As I am headed out the door to go run Jean often reminds me to take it easy and not get injured. When the kids are visiting they do the same. But what fun is it to take it easy?

Doing something within my limits isn’t the least bit entertaining. I’ve run short and slow plenty of times and it’s boring. What’s fun is doing something at the boundary of my limits. The challenge of running a long distance, or running fast over a long distance, is fun. To do better than I think I can; to surprise myself; to find the upper limits of my running ability; to find how much misery I can tolerate and not break. There is a satisfaction that comes from being the mental master of your own body. Is that too Zen-like, and is that necessarily a bad thing? I think not.

Wikipedia says that “Zen emphasizes experiential wisdom in the attainment of enlightenment.”

But let’s get back to the injuries. If I’d known that racing for 15 miles on the road this fall would injure me, then I would not have done it; I’d have raced the 10-mile, or the 5, or not at all. If I’d known that one step in the middle of a 9-mile workout was one step too many and would cause a muscle pull in my calf, I wouldn’t have taken that final fatal step. I would have stopped and walked one step short of that injury. If my body had warned me I would have stopped earlier. I need a dashboard like a car.

But my body doesn’t give me useful warnings. Sure I’m tired. Sure I’m sore. It happens after every workout and every race. If I let fatigue and small aches and pains keep me from running I’d only run every other day. My adversaries would kick my butt easily in races because I’d never get in racing shape. The aches and pains are indicators, but not useful indicators. They are indicators that most runners ignore regularly. We have to if we want to be competitive.

Every runner has at least one story of going to the doctor for a running injury. Inevitably the doctor prescribes rest – the exact thing the runner wishes to avoid. So the end result is that runners avoid doctors when injured. Runners instead trade home remedies for all manner of injuries and advise each other NOT to waste time or money on a doctor because, “He’ll just tell you to stop running.”

I was looking at the results of a recent 10K road race (6.2 miles) and noticed that there were

13   60-64 year-old men,
06   65-69 year-old men,
03   70-74 year-old men, and
01   75-79 year-old man.

Okay math and statistics geeks, this may be a stretch of logic from precious little data, but I think a reasonable mind would grant that the following is in the neighborhood of truth –

The drop-out rate, due to deaths or career-ending injuries, is pretty severe.  Notice that each 5 year increment has no more than half of the previous 5-year group. The running future looks pretty grim.

From these results I guesstimate that there is

a 46% chance that I will still be running 05 years from today (6/13= 0.46),
a 23% chance that I will still be running 10 years from today (3/13= 0.23), and
a 08% chance that I will still be running 15 years from today (1/13= 0.46).

Clearly my running is going to come to an end someday due to death or injury. Still, it is difficult to imagine an injury that would keep me from running. I predict it will be death that stops me. I certainly hope it is death, as a career-ending injury would kill me.

Tom
February 2012