To recap since my last real week of mileage (March 18-24), here's a complete timeline from injury to now (w/weekly mileage). This is a pretty lengthy write-up so feel free to scroll to the bottom if you just wanted to see the weekly log (which is brief).
End of March
After feeling sick and out-of-shape for the majority of the month, I was starting to feel a lot stronger on runs and felt I was getting into shape. We did a lot of hard workouts the first week back (hills monday, tempo tuesday, track intervals thursday and sunday). Normally, this would just be a tough week but it ended up taking a toll on me because I was sick/out of shape and the guys ran the easy runs way too hard so I never properly recovered. This was the last week I ran over 30 miles until recently.
The following week, I had planned to take Monday off as last week had been really tough, it had been a while since I had taken a day off and Monday is usually an easy (skippable) day anyway. It ended up being a really nice day and a lot of the distance guys were doing a longer run, so I decided tag along and push back my off day a week. This was the first run where I felt the injury. We ran 11 miles at 6:30 and while I felt very comfortable, I had a nagging discomfort in my shin the entire time. It didn't seem like a huge deal, so I was just hoping it would go away soon. The next day was 9 miles, at a fast 6:22 (not comfortable) and my shin hurt quite a bit. The increase in pain was alarming and I made sure to ice well post-run. Woke up the next day with even more shin pain and knew it was time to take a few days off. Shin hardly improved so I ended up taking Wednesday-Saturday off and going out for an easy 3 Sunday which felt pretty terrible. Attempt #1 fail.
It's pretty clear I got injured because of a really hard week when I simply wasn't ready for it. But my shin felt fine all week, and it makes me wonder- would I be injured if I had taken that Monday instead of running 11 miles? Would I be injured if I had iced Monday instead of Tuesday? Would I be injured if I took Tuesday off? It's hard to answer these questions because I have no idea, but I think Monday did the damage and taking it off would have avoided that.
March 25-31: 24 miles
April
April was a month where I constantly pondered the same questions. When can I start running again? How slow will I have to start up? Is my outdoor season salvageable? I actually did a fairly decent job of cross training. I say decent because I was on the stationary bike every day somehow doing 45-60 minutes with the occasional pool run of similar length. I realize more of this is required to keep up with the calorie burn of running but its a trade off between how much fitness I want versus how much boredom/suffering I'll put up. I usually not even this disciplined, and I certainly wasn't through the rest of the injury.
Anyway, I took a lot of time off post the 3 mile run (11 days) and began running slowly on the turf. It felt good enough that I slowly increased mileage and moved to the trails the next weeks. Things felt decent for a while but it slowly caught up to me and eventually the shin pain returned. Went too fast on some runs, but it's hard to be disciplined on the flat turf. Attempt #2 fail.
April 1-7: 0 Miles
April 8-14: 9 Miles
April 15-21: 25 Miles
April 22-28: 7 Miles
May
May was a month that only saw me run three times. This was frustrating as I finished out the semester and came home still unable to run in my free time. After 9 days off, I began to run again, this time on the roads because I was so frustrated just doing laps on the turf. Had an okay run then a pretty bad one so shut things down again. Attempt #3 fail. After another 10 days off, I tried running again, this time at home for the summer. Another failure, couldn't even make it 2 miles without pain. Attempt #4 fail. It was around this time that I starting going to physical therapy and started biking. I was pretty lazy on the bike as I basically only did it when I felt I had been lazy. I still got in a couple of decent rides and hikes but injury-wise, this was not going to the right direction.
April 29-May 5: 10 Miles
May 6-May 12: 0 Miles
May 13-May 19: 3 Miles
May 20-May 26: 0 Miles
June
After a lot of days in physical therapy, I was finally cleared to run again (16 days between runs). The big difference this time (besides getting treatment) was wearing stability shoes. They were uncomfortable at first but since then have felt like they helped a lot. I got to slowly come back, all while feeling much better than the prior attempts. Things went very smoothly for a week and felt promising until I injured/pulled my Achilles doing a faster run. There were several aspects of this run that were warning signs (going from 7:30+ easy pace to 6:30, no warm-up) that I overlooked but also frustrating as I was literally just following the plan given to me. Attempt #5 fail. The Achilles injury was really tough as I basically couldn't walk for 3 weeks, let alone think about returning to running. Not being able to run is incredibly frustrating but not being able to walk is pretty much devastating. As an athlete who wants to perform at a high level, it's difficult to be unable to complete the simplest of tasks while others do so with ease (walking, driving, etc.). This was major loss for me as I basically lost all shot at having some decent summer races and hiking would have to be put on a long delay.
May 27- June 2: 3 Miles
June 3-June 9: 10 Miles
June 10-16: 0 Miles
June 17-23: 0 Miles
June 24-30: 0 Miles
July
Towards the end of June, I was finally able to walk and began cross training again. In addition to physical therapy, I was also spending time talking/consulting with a podiatrist. I got a little more into biking than usual and set a PR for longest ride at 33.5, breaking the 30 mile barrier I hadn't done before. The more I biked, however, the more bored of it I became and I ended up only exercising 2-3 times a week. I finally started to run again, and once again, running was encouraging. Lots of days off, but I got up to higher distances (7) pretty quickly and without much pain. My achilles would bother me at the beginning of the runs but overall feel mostly fine. I got in my first hard effort at a Westerly fun run (6:00 pace) feeling pretty good. My shin pain was nonexistent and had almost completely disappeared. I was all set to hit a 30 mile week and officially come back, be ready for cross country, when... my shin was suddenly really painful during a trail run. It wasn't a slight pain that came on slowly but rather a sudden sharp pain that never left and only got worse as I went on. Attempt #6 fail. Since this wasn't a complete blowout injury like my achilles, I could still do exercises just fine and not have to take ridiculously long breaks between runs. I tried to keep it going a couple times but after having pain on easy 3 and 2 miles runs, I knew it was again time to call it.
July 1-7: 0 Miles
July 8-14: 18 Miles
July 15-21: 23 Miles
July 22-28: 3 Miles
August
After further talking to the podiatrist (pretty much done with PT at this point), I began adding in a thick orthotic into my stability shoes. Unlike the stability shoes which I quickly adjusted to and felt comfortable, the orthotics are extremely uncomfortable and I absolutely hate them. I resumed the 3-mile easy run attempts on a family trip to Canada and while the results weren't great, I was finally able to get something consistent going. I was basically tolerating the maximum pain/discomfort allowed to continue but I still felt barely good enough that I could keep going. I got in a couple of decent longer runs (5 and 6) miles that were uncomfortable. Even after a much worse than usual run towards the end where I had a significant cut-down in distance, I still got out there the next day and was feeling great. I sure wasn't going to be fit for XC but could definitely still make something out of the season. And then...during a rainy run in Barn Island, I landed awkwardly on a rock and sprained my ankle badly. The irony of this is that I tried hard to stay on wide non-technical trails and ended up spraining my ankle on pretty much the only (and very brief) section of single-track. I walked a little, attempted to resume running and failed. That was honestly one of the worst/least enjoyable days of my life. I had to walk 3 miles out of there on a badly injured ankle while being absolutely swarmed by mosquitoes and deer flies, constantly enduring bites and hitting myself like a madman. This was right before a work shift and I decided to go anyway (I would have had to call out minutes before starting the shift). Felt okay at first, but pain worsened dramatically throughout the night and had I not caught a break and been able to go home early, I probably would collapsed on the floor at some point. Pain became excruciating and unbearable. It was promising that a doctor said I could be back to running in 1-2 weeks, but he was very wrong. Went back to school not only walking awkwardly but unable to exercise at all. Attempt #7 fail.
July 29-August 4: 5 Miles
August 5-11: 20 Miles
August 12-18: 3 Miles
August 19-25: 0 Miles
August 26-September 1: 0 Miles
September
September was a really tough month as while I had dramatic improvement in my ankle immediately (walking became normal), it was extremely inflexible and took a long time to regain enough flexibility to run. I went pretty hard on the bike for a few weeks, doing 2 45 mile bike rides and exercising most days of the week. I had some unexpected issues with my bikes and due to growing boredom of biking and these issues (a lot of resistance in pedaling), I called it quits for biking on the year. I still did some stationary biking and elliptigo but absolutely hated both and was burning no more than 200 calories from exercise a day. This was definitely a low point, but eventually Coach gave me a bunch of ankle exercises to do and had me run in place on a trampoline. I stuck to this routine daily and in just a few weeks I was running a mile on the turf.
September 2-8: 0 Miles
September 9-15: 0 Miles
September 16-22: 0 Miles
September 23-29: 4 Miles
October
October was finally a return to running and mostly a good one at that. I slowly built mileage, running barefoot miles on the turf and eventually transitioning to the track and roads. This was a long and slow buildup, the slowest/lowest I've ever started and slowest I've built mileage. This was necessary due to my ankle and generally, I was pushing things pretty far as my ankle would bother me just at the end of runs. My ankle issues (and some achilles tightness) went away pretty quickly but the further I went I was presented with a new issue: return of the shin pain. Shin pain was generally pretty bad but I got away with a surprising amount of running despite having a lot of painful runs. I decided to start rolling out my shin out of curiosity this past week and upon feeling much, much better to the point where I forget I'm even injured, I think I'm finally on the path to healthiness. Attempt #8 success (so far).
September 30- October 6: 13 Miles
October 7-13: 22 Miles
October 14-20: 31 Miles
October 21-27: 34 Miles
I'm not completely out the clear yet as my shin still has some discomfort and my ankle is definitely not 100%, but as I said before, this was a big week for me and I definitely feel like I'm getting healthy and able to train again. To see how much this injury affected my mileage wise, see the chart below.
| Month | Mileage | Percent of Yearly Mileage |
| January | 271 | 28% |
| February | 193 | 20% |
| March | 216 | 23% |
| April | 41 | 4% |
| May | 13 | 1% |
| June | 13 | 1% |
| July | 46 | 5% |
| August | 26 | 3% |
| September | 4 | 0% |
| October | 128 | 13% |
| Total | 951 |
While still far off my March/February (which were somewhat of a tapering month followed by a rebuilding month), October has been well over any other of the injury months. If mileage goes to plan in November, I should at least match my March mileage, if not exceed it (and hopefully match my January mileage in December). I likely won't run more than 1500 miles on the year but even that would be a remarkable turnaround considering I basically did nothing from April-September.
2019 has absolutely been a year of struggles for me and it got me thinking about the mental challenge of coping with an injury. Injury are tough because you're completely removed from the sport and are forced to find tedious ways to come back. But is being unable to run worse than racing consistently terrible or feeling consistently flat during a long training block? For a casual runner the answer is no. But for me, I honestly would have rather been injured during outdoor than race terrible most of the time. I've experienced all three of these now- feeling flat during training, racing terribly and being injured. While being injured is the worst from a trying to stay fit/burn calories perspective, the other two are sometimes harder to deal with. Running is no longer fun when every run is miserable due to extremely tight/heavy/sore legs (or other part) without said problem ever leaving (I know this isn't common but I weirdly experienced this last fall) and it's definitely disappointing to train hard an entire season for a couple goal races and totally bombing them. All three of these are tough (and somewhat interrelated) but my point is there are running-related problems that are just as bad as injury.
On a different note, I injured three different things during this entire block. In the past, I had only had three major injuries- achilles/tibial tendon, back (minor issue but really messed up my season), and a dislocated wrist/broken arm (not running-related but still required time off). I know exactly why I injured each but still am unsure why two of them took so long to resolve (achilles responded pretty normally and was never reinjured while the others did not). It's interesting how the shin injury was by far my biggest ever and generally the reason I didn't run most of the year, yet the least painful. When my shin hurt, I knew it was time to stop running but it generally never got bad and I never had a period of time when I limped or had trouble walking. The achilles, on the other hand was incredibly painful the few days after injury and walking was near impossible. Yet this injury healed the quickest and I had the quickest turnaround to start running again. My ankle was also very painful although nowhere near as bad as the achilles but took much longer to heal. My worst pain of the year was actually getting sick/stomach bug in Florida, however, which hardly affected my running. More pain usually correlates to a worse injury, but its interesting how in my case, it's been the opposite.
While I feel I'm in a pretty good spot now, there are several aspects of these injuries that worry me for the future. I don't know if my shin pain will resurface, but I'm fairly confident that my achilles won't (unless a separate injury). My biggest concern is my sprained ankle. I have yet to return to the trails, and I genuinely don't know what the procedure is on how to start running trails again. While I mostly run roads, I do enjoy my easy days on trails and it'd be depressing if I had to completely give them up for an extended period of time. But between not running trails and respraining my ankle, I'll definitely pick the former. Another problem, if this even is a problem, if that I used stability shoes for the first time this year and now currently am only training in them. Is there a point where I can switch back to neutral shoes or will I simply be running in stability shoes for life? I also don't know whether it's a injury risk to race because I'll be racing in flats/spikes which have minimal cushioning.
Anyway, that's the end of my ramble of thoughts. I hopefully wrapped up my injury-filled year and can now talk about training in the future. Here's my weekly log:
Monday: 6 Miles
Ran 3 with Dylan and Tyler who were also running easy due to injury recovery, then added on 2.5 solo. Tried rolling out my shin pre-run and had virtually shin pain and minimal discomfort, and that trend fortunately has continued since.
Tuesday: 7 Miles
Weak solo morning run. Generally feel a lot worse on morning runs then afternoon because of less fuel and less sleep. This was the case today but got through it without any issues. Shin felt good. Short rose into faculty, a route I definitely like.
Wednesday: 8 Miles
Short snell, first proper run with the team since March. Considering I have virtually no fitness right now, I was glad everyone wanted to run easy otherwise I may been dropped or struggled. A ton of guys on this run.
Thursday: 7 Miles
Was considering taking the day off but ran to complete the October distance challenge on strava. Explored a new road. Steady pouring rain the whole. Thursday is another morning run day for me but I felt a lot better than Tuesday, at least energy wise. Tight at the beginning.
Friday: 8 Miles
Pudding hill with a couple of guys, enjoyable run as we kept it easy and I felt really good. Nice weather too.
Saturday: 7 Miles
Did the same route as Tuesday yet felt ready good and progressed from a 6:50 to a 5:50. Encouraging that this felt like a pretty relaxed effort despite running my first sub-6 mile since injury. Had to run solo since everyone else was doing trails but still enjoyable.
Sunday: 11 Miles
Wednesday Hill, first run over 10 miles since injury. Had to go solo since everyone else was running trails (again!) but didn't especially enjoy this one. Felt pretty tight throughout and just wanted the run to be done with. Shin starting to worsen as well.
Weekly Total: 54 Miles
YTD Total: 977 Miles
Weekly Highlight: This was a really great week as I started to feel an improvement in shin pain/discomfort and ran a much higher mileage than any week since March. Definitely a massive step in the right direction, although there's certainly some tests still to come.
Weekly Lowlight: It's hard to have any specific complaints with this week, but I guess I felt a little tighter on certain runs than I would have liked.
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