Anatomy of an Injury – Part III – After (The Head Game)

In the first two parts of this series, a covered how I thought I was prepared for a May 2nd half marathon, and then how I broke a bone in my foot while running a 5K on April 17th.  So now I’m sporting a new minimalist shoe.

I took a week off work so I could start healing and not have to deal with my long commute from Northern New Jersey to lower Manhattan.   That was a good thing for my foot, but at the other end of my body the games began.  Here’s just a sample of what was going on there:

• Am I too old for this “barefooting” stuff?
• Am I too heavy?  Do I put too much stress on my feet because of my weight?  (My BMI is right at the top end of the normal scale)
• Did I do too much too soon?  Should I have done more speed work?  Core workouts?
• Do I have a bone density problem?  More Calcium?  Vitamin D?  Sunlight?
• Should I give up on barefooting/minimalist running and get some conventional shoes?
• Should I take running a marathon off my “bucket list”?

The list could go on and on.  I can’t help it.  By training I am an engineer.  Its in my nature to want everything to work as designed.  And when it doesn’t work you have to figure out why.  And change it so it works better next time.  Or sometimes face the reality that the design isn’t appropriate, or the parts are too old and worn, or the device is being used incorrectly.

So I’ve analyzed it and analyzed it.  Some of my mental questions are easily answered.  I don’t have a bone density problem.  I eat a well balanced diet.  I take Vitamin D supplements daily and while I don’t get tons of direct sun I do get out often.

I’m not too old.  I know a lot of runners older than I that run more, faster, and BF/minimalist.

While I should and do plan to lose some of these extra pounds I don’t think that is the main cause of the problem.   Once again, I know lots of runners with higher BMI than I.

So what happened?  Well, of course, there is no way to know exactly.  It could just be a freak accident, one in a million. It also could have been something that was slowly happening over time, although the doc said the x-ray didn’t show any evidence of that.

I believe that Barefoot Josh hit it on the head in his comment on Part II when he said:

“Maybe in your excitement, you pushed off a bunch to generate more speed. I do that too when in vffs.”

I hadn’t done a lot of speed work prior to the race, mostly because I didn’t expect to be running very fast in the planned half marathon.   So perhaps in my exuberance I pushed off just a little too hard early in the 5K.  Maybe there was a really small stress fracture developing and I pushed it over the edge.  Then, by pushing to finish, including a sprint to the finish, I probably made the break worse.

So what do I do now?  Well, first, I’ve got to stop the head games.  I can’t change my situation.  Have to heal first.  No amount of thinking/analyzing/worrying/fearing is going to change it.  I happened.

But I do have to figure out what to do different/better.  In Part IV I’ll go over what I’m planning.

Anyone in the audience had a SF?  If so, does any of this sound familiar?  What did you do when you started back?

Tagged as: Events, Half marathon, Stress fracture