A moment of physical and mental struggle — Legally Fit – 𝑵𝒆𝒘𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑻𝒊𝒑𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒆𝒓, 𝑯𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒆𝒓 𝒀𝒐𝒖

This is not my typical marathon post. I’m not going to provide an overall update of my training since the last post. And I’m not going to include the journal of my training below this – that will wait for the next post. I wasn’t even going to blog this week, but I want to share this moment I’m going through in real time as I struggle – both physically and mentally – to deal with pain.

I’m sitting here writing this at 6:40 AM on Saturday morning when I am supposed to be out on my 17-mile run. I loaded on carbs last night and ate my pre-run bagel with peanut butter and banana this morning after waking up at 4:20 AM. I did all of that thinking my body was just good enough to run today. “Just good enough” because, even though I’ve been experiencing worsening groin pain the past two days, I treated it by getting a massage yesterday evening.

Going into the massage, I had doubts about whether I would be able to run today. To be honest, they were more than doubts. My groin pain was at an all-time high. The pain has been bilateral, but the left side is worse right now, and it caused me to limp throughout the day. I had no place even trying to negotiate with myself how to make a 17-mile run happen today. If I could barely walk less than 24-hours before running 17 miles, then surely, I shouldn’t run. But the massage was part of the negotiation I was having with myself. Besides, I didn’t think it would fix the problem anyway. It turned out the massage helped. It worked better than expected, as I felt immediate relief. No, I wasn’t perfect afterwards, but I felt much better, and I wasn’t limping.

I woke up with some expected soreness, but as I got onto my feet, I started convincing myself that I could run. The negotiation continued as I strategized about whether to go out for the 17-miles, run a shorter distance, go slower, or skip it entirely. There’s a part of me that’s programmed to push forward with training, and that part of me was optimistic enough to prepare my bagel and continue with the rest of my pre-long-run routine of getting into my gear, packing up my gels and salt tablets, and filling up the bottles in my hydration vest. With each task, the tightness in my groin grew. Still, I was programmed to continue getting ready.

Once I was fully dressed and ready to go, I tried my best to stretch out the tightness. My groin was in pain. At a certain point it locks up. I practiced some jogging moves, and interestingly, those movements themselves didn’t hurt. But again, that’s just a foolish negotiation because the groin hurts.

I know some of you see that the obvious move here is to not run today, but the mindset of a runner is to figure out how to navigate it. I’ve done that before, and it was the right decision to cautiously test my sore body on a short run. But it wasn’t before a long run, and this time I know deep down that even if I can run the 17 miles, the consequences could be severe.

II know this because I literally wrote about it a year ago. I shared a lesson I had not yet learned about listening to the signals my body sent as I worsened a climbing injury. I was paying the price for it at the time. It’s the essence of listening to your body, and those lessons often come from the mistakes we make. Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of writing this blog just came from going back and reading my own words as if they were a lesson I was writing purely for me to read today.

Here’s some of what’s in there:

“My obsession with rock climbing and the progress I was making went a bit too far.”
“[T]he bigger [problem] came from how I handled the injury as it started to creep in.”
“When I felt my elbow getting sore a few weeks ago, my instinct was to ignore that signal and push through it. As I write this, it seems so obvious what happened next, yet I was blind to it at the time. Of course, the injury worsened, but as it did, I still couldn’t stop.”
“. . . I undoubtedly could have lessened the problem by listening to my body when the soreness first started – and at several other points both before and after that day outside.”
“The point is, no matter what the circumstance — we should all do our best to recognize the signals our bodies send to us, listen to them, treat them, get help, be patient, and trust the process.”

Reading my words had a chilling effect on me. It stopped me dead in my tracks. There’s no way I can be so stubborn, foolish, and short-sighted as to go out and run today. If I do, I can only imagine the blog post I’d write about how stupid I was to ignore these words I wrote a year ago. There’s literally only one way to approach today – let it go. I need to recognize where my body is. I need total awareness of it. I need clarity.

My body might be a bit better than yesterday. I honestly don’t even know yet. It’s too early, and the mere sign that I woke up better is not enough since I already feel it starting to flare up. What’s clear is that I shouldn’t run today. It’s not easy to recognize that when my mind is all about running. It’s even harder to admit it. Letting my mind accept that my body is too injured to go out for my long run today opens it up to so many other doubts that follow. It takes me back to when my former body hurt so much from running that I had to give it up. It makes me doubt whether I will be healthy enough to run the marathon on November 2. It makes me doubt whether I can even run a marathon.

For over 10 weeks of this training program, I’ve shared this journey with passion as I bring you into my efforts to reach my dream. Until now, those posts have expressed my confidence and ambition as I set new personal records nearly every week for the distance I’ve run. Rarely have doubts crept in yet. Sure, I’ve always said that I won’t know if I can run a marathon until I do, but I’ve visualized the moment so many times, that part of me has come to believe it is inevitable. Today could not feel any farther from inevitable than it does. It feels fragile. But thankfully, the marathon is not today, and it does me no good to wonder what I’d do if it was.

What I know from today is that I don’t want to feel like this when I wake up on November 2. How I approach the next few days – or even weeks – of my training might dictate whether that happens. I know that running today – and probably even putting this run off until tomorrow – would be a mistake that I could regret. It would likely lead to more posts about doubting this journey. But I also know that I have time on my side right now. The marathon is nine weeks away, and I am ahead of things. Had I chosen the beginner training plan instead of a more advanced one, I wouldn’t be hitting 17 miles for another five weeks. When I did 16 miles last week, the beginner plan called for 11 to 12.

I said in the beginning of this process that I chose this intermediate-level plan because it’s easier to move down than to move up after it starts. Maybe I’ll have to do that. Maybe I won’t. But right now, I must get better. I must do so to get my body right. And clearly, I must do so to get my mind right.

A few weeks ago, I quoted Kobe Bryant who said, “When the game itself is more significant than the pain, you forget about the pain. Then the pain won’t get in the way.” It’s key to remember that this quote is about the game. For me, the game is not until November 2. Every day before then is just to prepare myself in every way possible for the pain to not get in the way. Some days, that means training to run distances I’ve never reached before. But right now, it means taking some time off from running to make the pain go away. That’s how I will win today.

Aaron

Postscript (Monday at 4:25 PM): Taking the past few days off from running to focus on healing has helped. I’ve stayed active with light workouts being careful not to aggravate anything. For what it’s worth, I canceled going skydiving today — again! I canceled it partly because I thought it could affect my injury. But mostly, I canceled it because my injury has my focus, and that’s not the space I want to be in when jumping. Right now, I’m just grateful that I’ve been feeling better each day. Not yet ready to run again, but getting closer.