Injuries and Negative Self Talk: A PT’s Experience
Slipping on my running shoes, I checked the temperature outside and it was still 105 degrees. Not in the mood to run in the dark, I’d have just enough time to get my miles in before the sun was completely down. “Good thing I only have to run two miles,” I thought to myself. Two miles, that’s it, the furthest I had run in six months. Nothing compared to the 16-20 miles I had been running almost every weekend at the beginning of the year but after six months of recovery from an injury, those two miles would be a sober reminder of how hard I would fight, and always had to fight, to build any endurance for running.
Girl running near Prescott, Arizona near the Dells
Cruising down the sidewalk in my neighborhood the heat of the evening was oppressive. My heart rate was much higher than it should have been given the speed at which I was running, but that’s what Arizona summers combined with being out of shape will do to you. One mile ticked off rather quickly but mile two was not going to come so easily. Frustration started to tug at the edges of my mind, a familiar sensation that has both prevented and fueled my running since I was a fifth grader holding back tears as I came struggling in, barely able to breathe, at the end of the requisite mile run in PE class. Somehow, in my dreams and imaginations I am always able to run easily, quickly, keeping up with the athletic and powerful women I’ve always admired.
In reality I never participated in sports when I was young and always felt like an outcast when it came to physical activity because for me, running and breathing were mutually exclusive. A betrayal of my own body. A cosmic joke directed at me, perhaps, and despite wanting so much to be a part of the community of women who sweat and toil and triumph in the world of athletics I would only ever watch from the sidelines.
At thirty-three years old you would think that these childhood experiences would have long lost their hold on me. But that’s the thing about one’s formative years, they have a way of building strong and sometimes sneaky thought patterns that carry into adulthood and often try and sabotage us from behind the scenes. Ten year old me was very much present during the second mile of my run this night, let me tell you. While I focused on my breathing and reminded myself that fitness will come with consistency, my ten year old self felt defeated. All she could do was think of how much better our life would have been if we could have joined the soccer team, won the local 5k, kept up with the fast runners in the local running group. We would have felt so powerful and of course, the underlying truth, we would have felt worthy.
“Woah sister, we have got to get these thoughts under control” I breathed, as I walked into the park by my house to stretch. Comparison as the thief of joy is a concept most of us are familiar with and one that has resonated, an undercurrent, throughout my running endeavors as an adult. I ran my first half marathon at 21 years old just to prove to my childhood self that I could do it. Then I did it again, several more times actually, along with one slightly miserable full marathon thrown in the mix. Each time I would immediately abandon running once the event was over and start from scratch a couple years later when the itch to train arose again. It wasn’t until the spring of 2019 that I discovered how running and hiking in the mountains and parks of Arizona by myself and with friends breathed life and peace into me like nothing else I had experienced before. Work stress, personal life stress, family stress all melted away when I laced up a pair of shoes and hit the trail. I met new friends who are also trail runners and learned that despite what I had always told myself, there was a place for me in running and that the only one who would ever feel disappointed in my performance was me.
Heading into the fall of 2019 I was still loving running and had an awesome group of friends to adventure with each week, but that year had been very stressful for me and the cumulative effects were settling in. I found myself daydreaming about escaping into the woods to hike and run instead of dealing with the tough realities of my day to day life. So, when one of my friends suggested we sign up for a 50k in March of the next year, the precipitous decision to jump on board came easily. Subconsciously I realized that focusing my time and attention on training for my longest race yet would be a great way to avoid addressing the thing’s in my personal life that were screaming for attention.
_______________________________________________________________
“Have you given any thought to the idea that this may be your body’s way of forcing you to stop? Asking you to recognize how much you have been ignoring its signals and messages about being overwhelmed and stressed this year?” my therapist asks me as I sit across from her in her office. It’s October, six weeks before I am supposed to start my 50k training plan, and I am nursing a cup of tea and ignoring the nerve pain snaking it’s way across my facial nerve from the Shingles that has staked a claim on my chin. “Duh!” I thought to myself. This has become a repeating pattern with me the last couple of years, pushing myself and burning the candle at both ends only to have my body finally shout “I give up!” and lay me out on the couch for a couple weeks with the flu or other malady. The embarrassing part is, I am not unaware of the wisdom of my body. I hear her. I know when she is politely asking me to slow down or to change course, but often instead of respecting her as I know I should, I feel inconvenienced and instead push ahead.
As physical therapist, I know better. My job is to be an expert in the signs and signals of the physical body and to counsel people in prevention and rehabilitation of illness and injury. Sometimes I think having the depth of knowledge I have affords me a little too much leeway to make well-informed poor decisions. So once the Shingles had finally relented and I began to try and regain the ground I had lost, week one of my 50k training plan rushed toward me. With three good friends also training for the event I forged ahead and honestly was surprised and excited at the progress I was making. As the weeks went by and the mileage built I could feel myself getting stronger but a nagging foot pain was beginning to frustrate me. Consulting a colleague who works with runners and using all the tools I had in my toolbox to soothe the irritation wasn’t working. I just needed to get to the taper and the decreased mileage and extra rest will likely do the trick, I kept telling myself.
Limping through long runs for several weeks I decided to take five days off to let my foot rest. I knew that I was risking injury by continuing to train with this pain but for once I could feel myself getting stronger and improving and the intoxicating images of me powering through this 50k, feeling proud of myself, exceeding my self-imposed limits, was clouding my judgment. Ten year old me was beginning to feel the validation she had been looking for and the wiser and more practical mind of my present self just couldn’t disappoint her, because in truth, that ten year old self is me and I still dream of the pride and accomplishment of standing on the podium of a race.
The good news is that my foot pain finally got better. Not because I made it to my taper and rested and rehabbed the injury but because I stopped running altogether 3.5 weeks before the race when without any signs of impending injury I finished an easy 5 mile run barely able to bear weight on the other leg. Femoral neck stress fracture was the crime and the sentence was 7 weeks on crutches and 4.5 months of zero running.
Sitting on the couch, alone in my living room, crutches next to me, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself that I was forbidden to participate in my favorite stress relieving practices during the time when the state was shut down in an attempt to contain a global pandemic. I was still going to work as a physical therapist and exposed to hundreds of people a week at our clinic so I was purposely isolating myself from friends and family. “Why did this injury happen?” I had to ask myself. The clinical answer is probably a mix of factors ranging from neglecting my strength training, trying low drop shoes for the first time, having low Vitamin D levels—a combination of bad luck and bad training decisions probably. But the more important truth could be found in the acknowledgment that amongst a community of runners who accept me for me, no matter my performance at races or pace on the trails, I hadn’t been able to accept myself. I forgot to be grateful for what my body is capable of doing and treating it with the reverence and respect that it deserves. I allowed myself to chase external validation and in recognizing this pattern repeating itself again, my body simply said
“Stop. No more.”
Selfie of a woman out on a train run
So here I am, six months later, sweating through the Arizona summer. As I reflect on that two mile run, my new long run distance for the second half of 2020, I have a chance to acknowledge that while my ten year old self may have felt unworthy of love and belonging I do no have to continue to carry that burden into this next phase of my life and training. I know that I will stumble and I cannot expect perfection but I am looking forward to returning to the trails, to the community I have come to love, to commit myself to appreciating the strength that I already have and for once, when my body speaks, to listen.
