Step 1: Mission Accomplished

After yesterday's adventure at the hospital, I still had my appointment with the podiatrist this morning to see if he could help me out. And I feel pretty good about it. He gave some good explanations about what was most likely happening in my leg, and even some things that can be done about it. The bottom line that he noticed is that I do, in fact, overpronate something fierce. And the running all on one side of the road -- that was dumb. But I'm not in any acute pain right now, and it doesn't look like I've done any real damage.

And the most important thing? I can go back to running. Gradually. And I'm probably going to be even more cautious than he wants me to.

So, when I feel up to it (tomorrow or Thursday, depending on how the burn on my leg feels), I will be heading to the gym to run on the treadmill for a mile and reevaluate after that. I may be able to go up to two, but he told me not to go any farther than that. And yes, Chuck -- he told me not to run on roads if I can at all help it. And, in other news, I will be skipping the long run this week, also, to make sure that I'm happily ready to resume later.

The other outcome was that I'm getting orthotics. Nice ones. Way better than the over the counter ones. At least, for what they're charging me, it better be the best damn feeling in the world. But they should also be a big help. The only downfall is that the doc told me not to go get the new shoes until the orthotics come in (in two weeks -- my follow-up visit). I'm disappointed in that, but I won't be running very far until then, so it'll just have to do.

I'm just happy I can do something running-related again. Hooray!

Code Monkey Get Up, Get Frostbite

or, "Three More Reasons Why I'm An Idiot".

How many times have you ever heard of somebody getting frostbite in Florida... in August? Not all at once, let's just see a show of hands. Let's see... carry the 1... that leads to a total of roughly "zero".

Well, now you have.

For the last several weeks, I've been icing my leg with the shin splints and trying to take care of it. I've been using either ice in an ice bag or this nifty little ice pack that I got in my race packet once upon a time. Some of you can already see where this is going.

Well, yesterday, I decided to ice my leg again while I was at work. The ice pack had been in the work freezer all weekend, and was chilled and ready for me. So, I put it on my leg. Directly. Without a towel (this is mistake #1 -- I'll be keeping track). Since I was sitting at my desk at the time, and couldn't work really well with my leg propped up, I wrapped it to my leg with an ace bandage (mistake #2 -- they're really piling up now). After about ten minutes, it suddenly dawned on me that I couldn't feel my leg anymore. That should be a clue to take the ice pack off, right? Well... I did! Ha! I bet you thought mistake #3 was coming up -- but not yet.

I took the ice pack off, and it was weird. Really. The skin was obviously cold. But it was actually hard. It felt like there was a layer of ice on top of my skin. This is not going to be good. So, I started trying to warm it up. I pulled my jeans over top of it and started rubbing (mistake #3 -- it turns out that you are not supposed to rub such an injury). But it did warm up, and I started thinking that maybe everything would be OK.

A couple hours later, it was starting to hurt. I looked at it, and it was red and puffy. And painful. OK... at this point, I'm starting to get worried. I'm thinking of all those arctic mountain movies that show people's toes breaking off, and it's not making me feel good. So I called my wife and lovingly asked her to please take me to the emergency room. She, being the wonderful wife that she is, agreed, almost immediately.

She picked me up and took me to the hospital -- the same one that recently hosted me for my surgery. There was actually another hospital closer, but we figured that I'm already a frequent flier at the other hospital, so we just went up there. After all, if I get the card punched eight more times, I get a free appendectomy. But then I had to check in, which was fine, except for the box asking what the problem was.

"Froze leg"

Yep, that's what I put. And that was my explanation for the rest of the day. When I went into the triage, the nurse asked me what happened.

"I froze my leg!"

When I got put in the exam room and the nurse came in to look at it:

"I froze my leg!"

And when the doctor came it, it became almost comical. The conversation was something along these lines:

Doc: "What did you do?"
Me: "I froze my leg!"

Doc: "You burned it."
Me: "So, it's OK?"
Doc: "Yeah, you burned it"
Me: "Whew. I was just wondering, you know, because it hurts and all..."
Doc: "Because you burned it"
Me: "So you're saying I burned it?"

Yeah, she wasn't the most bedside mannered doc in the world, but she assuaged my fears. And she sent a nurse in to give me a tetanus shot (since I don't even remember the last one I had... it was a long time ago). The nurse came in and told us, "I'm just so happy I got to go see the guy who got frostbite!"

I might just be a source of discussion around there for a while.

So, two and a half hours after getting to the hospital, I was on my way back to work. With a burned, frozen leg.

So, please... if you are going to use ice packs, make absolutely sure that you follow the directions, and always use a towel or something between the ice pack and your leg. And I do want to point out that while I at least attempted to write this in a humorous way, I do realize that this is a very serious condition, and I heavily urge everyone to take this seriously. Any more mistakes on my part, I could have caused permanent damage. I have definitely learned from this experience.

But trust me, so long as you keep reading this blog, you will continue to see strange, stupid stories like this. They just happen to me. I don't know why. Remind me sometime to tell you the story of getting tackled off of a rope swing.

But hey, maybe it'll increase my readership.

Next Steps

Tom asked a good question in yesterday's comments:

Your shins will recover.

What will you do to prevent them from returning?

Fair warning: I am now going to sound a bit like a politician.

I am aware of the dire problem with my shins, and I have a three-part solution to combat this issue:

1. Get checked out
Next Tuesday, I have an appointment with a local podiatrist/sports doc to take a look at things and see what sort of solutions he might have for orthotics, or whatever else he may suggest. I don't know... that's why he's the doctor.

2. New shoes
After getting checked out, I am going to support my local running store and have them take a look at my running and see what sort of suggestions they might have for new shoes. It's a very good shop, and they have a treadmill in the shop for just this sort of thing. Honestly, I thought my shoes were good enough, but I got them at Sports Authority, so who can really tell. Again... it's all about getting the experts to help me out.

3. Change my running
One of the things I noticed when my shins first started hurting is that I always ran on the same side of the street -- running with my left leg (the one that hurts) towards the outside of the street, where it would get more pounding because of the crowning on the street. I'm definitely going to at least change that up regularly, along with taking some of Chuck's advice and avoiding road running for a while -- treadmills are boring, but they work. Plus, I have nice, soft beach sand here that I can run on also. I'm not sure that would help, but it sure is purty.

I am positive that with the implementation of this plan, I can eliminate the troubles that have plagued my running for these several weeks, so I can focus on the more pressing issue at hand -- that of getting myself ready to run 26.2 miles in less than six months.

Vote Bill.

He Lives!

First, I would like to apologize to all my loyal readers. I was not in jail, sent to a hospital, or abducted by aliens. In fact, I have simply just been incredibly busy, and still mostly off my feet, so I didn't have anything really run-worthy to write about.

But I'm back. Not to the running yet, but to the blogging. Let me start at the beginning.

Last Wednesday, I went to the doc. He told me to take it easy, ice, and no running for 10 days. So I have stuck with that. I did walk with my running group on Saturday, but things felt pretty OK after that (it was five miles). I have been *very* careful not to work things too hard, although I have not been very good about taking the Naproxen he prescribed for me. Or with icing. I've iced when it bothers me, but not normally... not sure if that's ok or not.

Anyway, I finally went back to the gym this morning to get a little cross-training in. I rode the bike and did some weight work... all no impact type things. And my leg feels pretty good. I'll slap the ice pack on it soon, but all in all, not bad at all. Hopefully, things will be looking much better this coming Saturday, when we are scheduled to do our next magic mile and alter the groups. I'm optimistic that things will be OK, but I'm definitely going to err on the side of caution.

That's basically all that there is to tell. No grand stories. But I'll see what I can do about that later. Right now, I have to get back to work.

Ahhh... it feels so good to blog again!

Back on track?

After taking the whole week off of running, and attempting to take care of my leg as best I could, things were feeling great yesterday. And, as today happened to be a scheduled run with the Galloway group (and the first one where we are to be put in our pace groups), I thought I would give it a try. You know -- keep things pretty light, don't work too hard, be on the lookout for pain and whatnot. The bottom line is that it mostly worked.

I got to the start about 10 minutes before we were scheduled to begin, and found my pace group. Somehow, since my times last week were so good, I ended up in a faster group than I would have thought. I got put into the 11 min/mile pace group, running with a 4/1 run/walk ratio. And I was thinking that would be OK -- it's about what I've been running during the week, so how bad can it be, right? And the run itself wasn't that bad (I'll get to that in a second), but I got a little intimidated when I heard "we're pacing two minutes slower than the actual race pace".

Say what?

They want me to run NINE minute miles through TWENTY-SIX miles? That's faster than my fastest ever 5K pace!

Oh, boy.

But, I figured that I would give it a shot and see what I could do -- and besides, we had already started the run, so it was a little late to grab another group. And so I went. The scheduled run was 4 miles. And it felt OK. My shin felt a little sore after about two miles, but it mostly went away by the end of the run. It was either that, or I was distracted by my sucking for air at the end and didn't notice my leg hurting. But after a couple miles, we also realized that we hadn't found the turnoff to start heading back to start... so we went another way. It turned out that we didn't go too much farter than we were scheduled to go -- we ended up at 4.62 miles... in 48:20. Average pace was 10:27. And I didn't want to kill myself at the end. My body may have tried to die on its own... but it wasn't voluntary.

It is now a few hours past the run, and I'm attempting to take care of things. I iced my leg when I got home, and am definitely taking it easy. It still doesn't hurt that bad, but I think it has now hurt long enough that it's time to see the doc. I'll be making an appointment tomorrow, and we'll see where things go from there.

Gee, I hope they won't have to amputate.

Deep Tissue Distress

Last night, I got my first-ever deep tissue massage. If you have never done this before, by all means, please do not read the rest of this entry -- it may scar you for life. However, if you have had deep tissue assault done to you at some point in the past, please chime in and let me know just how much better it gets.

I work in an office, sitting at a computer, writing code all day long. Occasionally, I have to get up and walk down the hall for a meeting (or to play foosball), but my workday is pretty much sedentary. I also apparently have pretty bad posture, based on the fact that my back and shoulders are generally very tight, along with the "Oh, Good Lord!" scream that my masseuse let out when she got to my back and shoulders. I, of course, let her know of all the parts of my body that were strictly verboten, including my left shin and the area surrounding my surgery scar. Oddly enough, those are the only spots on my body that do not hurt this morning.

From what I hear, at some point either tonight or tomorrow, as long as I keep drinking lots of water, everything just releases and it feels awesome. I sure hope so. Right now, I just feel like a walking bruise.

Needless to say, there was no cross training this morning.

Ouch.

8 Reasons Why I'm an Idiot

...and three why I don't care.

If you've been following my blog for the last week or so, you know that I've been having some shin pain late last week. Honestly, it felt pretty good on Friday, but that doesn't excuse anything. Also, if you've noticed my run schedule, even if I don't have it posted on the site, I had a race scheduled this weekend. And it was an ugly one -- the Tour de Pain. Three races in twenty-four hours -- a four mile beach run on Friday night, a 5K Saturday morning, and a one mile "sizzler" Saturday afternoon. All done in August. In Florida. So, without further ado, this is why I'm an idiot:

1. My shin hurt last week, and I still ran the race.
2. I ended up staying awake until 1:00 in the morning on Thursday night/Friday morning. I didn't mean to. After all, I went to bed just after midnight!
3. I got new inserts for my shoes, hoping that they might help. I've heard tell that you should never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never do anything new to your shoes before a race. Luckily, in this case, it worked out OK -- the inserts felt pretty dang good.
   
4. My company went to see The Bourne Ultimatum on Friday during work. And I went with them. And I got movie theater popcorn. Not the healthiest lunch before a race.
5. And then afterwards, I went to Wendy's and got a baked potato.
   
6. I forgot to wrap my leg on Friday night, and I still ran the race. See reason #1.
   
7. I wrapped my leg for the 5K on Saturday. And I ran the race. And it hurt a bit. And I still kept running.
   
8. To top it all off, I ran a full-speed, all-out mile.
   

Now, truth be told, I ran the first two races kinda hard, but not really. I was really going for just barely faster than a typical training run. And really, my leg didn't hurt that bad after the four miler. It was a little worse after the 5K, and it was even a little worse after the mile, but still not so bad that I couldn't walk on it, or anything like that. I was still walking mostly normally.

Now, as for the reasons why I still don't care that I'm an idiot:

1. I was hoping for about 44:00 in the 4 miler. I got 40:51.
   
2. I was hoping for something around 35 in the 5K. I got a 30:50. My second best 5K time ever.
   
3. I was hoping for about 8:00 in the mile, but really expecting something like 8:30. I finished in 7:19. Holy crap!
   

So, the end result is that I ran three great races, all at faster times than I was thinking I would (and these were times I was hoping for during the race, based on how fast I thought I was going). My mental timing may be off, but I'm just pleased as punch that I can do so much, on a slightly injured leg, with so little recovery time in between. Today, my leg hurts a little, but only about as bad as it did last Thursday. I've decided that I will do absolutely no running at least until Saturday, and we'll see how I feel then as to whether I run the four miles with my group or not. But the rest of this week will be cross-training only. Biking and swimming. NO RUNNING!!!!!

Oh, and I did run the first two races as 3 minutes running/1 minute walking. Thank you, Galloway!

But, to finish it all off, this was the end goal:

Yep, it's my first race medal. Ever.

Clutch Leg

For much of the afternoon yesterday, my leg was hurting. Not in any specific place, just a general achiness -- and one that I knew that I had felt before. Well, it finally dawned on me this morning where I had felt like that before.

I used to own a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX, which tends to have a fairly tight clutch. I also used to live up in the DC area, which tends to have lots of bozos on the roads. There were some times when I would take the Eclipse to work in heavy traffic, and it would take near two hours to get there -- and I would be pushing in on the clutch most of the way there. It would wear out my leg something fierce, and it would just get achy all over.

That is what it felt like yesterday! So, henceforth, I am going to call this condition "clutch leg".

From what I can tell, it basically comes from overusing one leg far beyond where it should be used. Now, what does this have to do with running? Plenty. For a while, I was varying my course from time to time and making sure to run it backwards every now and then. After I started running my 3.2 (or 3.3, or 3.4) mile loop around the neighborhood, I've been running the same direction every time. And I'm basically staying on one side of the road, which does have a noticeable crown on it. Since the left leg (the one that hurts) is on the lower side of the road, I'm betting that has something to do with the achiness. So, when I do start road running again, I'm definitely going to make sure that I switch off road sides every now and then to try to even things out.

Of course, I bet everybody out there (yes, even you) are wondering... how does it feel today? Well, it feels pretty good. There's a little stiffness in the calf, but the shin is A-OK. Hooray. And I will still take it pretty easy today, just to make sure.

Shin update

When I got home last night, I iced my shin and took some Advil. And it seemed to help. At the very least, a pain reliever should relieve pain, right? I'm not sure if the icing did much, though, except to numb my leg for a little while.

Today I'm taking things very easy. I'm still taking Advil, and resting my leg as much as possible. However, it doesn't feel like every other time I've gotten shin splints. Right now, it just feels more like a sore muscle. And any pain I have is on the outside of my leg, rather than the inside where most of my shin problems had happened in the past (although I haven't had any problems for years).

Right now, I'm just going to go ahead with rest. Tonight, I'm going to use the heating pad to get some more blood flow there. Tomorrow... we'll tackle that when I get there.

Thanks for the advice, Chuck and Tom!

Not by the hair of my shinny shin shins.

Today's run could have been better. I got my pacing a little bit better, in that I didn't go out quite so fast. My first mile (no walking) was done in just over 10 minutes. After that, I did 4 minute run/1 minute walk for a while, and it felt really good. Heck, I was even able to run faster than the garbage truck -- which ended up being a mighty good thing, since I hadn't put my trash out last night. However, after about 2.5 miles, things started to feel less great. My shin started hurting.

Now, I'm not sure at this point whether it was actually shin splints or not (since it was only one leg, does that make it "shin splint"?), but it wasn't quite pleasant. I didn't let it get bad -- I started walking a lot more after that. Right now, it's still a little tender, but it's not a sharp pain... it's pretty dull, and almost feels more like soreness than anything else, but it's still not something I want to take for granted. Any suggestions?