The Betrayal

Today is the 2 month anniversary of "The Betrayal". Two months ago my knee began to hurting too much to run. It has betrayed me! Or maybe I betrayed it by not taking good enough care of it?! In any case I have been unable to run any reasonable distance since I ran 18 miles Oct. 24th. And...I feel betrayed.

What I say here will not make much sense to someone who just ambles through life without a goal upon which to focus. But if you have an goal that drives you, you will relate.

In January of 2009 I was sitting in a Geckos restaurant having lunch with my brother, who was a runner and a physician. I weighed almost 260 pounds and was lamenting to him that I was in a death struggle to loose weight and I could not seem to be able to accomplish that with any degree of success. I was fat and depressed remembering how I had lost 70 pounds without exercising 10 years back and how easy it seemed then and how impossible it seemed to lose even a pound now. He made a casual statement that really captured my imagination. he said, "You know bro, if you would just start running you could eat whatever you wanted and would lose weight and keep it off." Hmmmmm...really? Could it be that simple? Well he kept his weight under control and he was cut from the same gene pool herd I was. Well maybe it was true.

I am a pretty obsessive person. Maybe everyone is but I recognize it in myself to be part of my personality...who I am. When I am fat I am fat because I love food and I love eating it more than anything! I obsess about my next meal or what I am going to eat when I get home it even when I have a menu in my hand. I talk about eating and food, joke about it, dream about it, LOVE it!! I stand in front of people with my rotund belly bragging that I have won a Buffet Championship! I unashamedly declare I am a professional eater! lol I am way into food when I am into food. Then when I go on a diet..oh my!...its all about my diet...I can talk endlessly about the 3 ounces I lost by eating cardboard cutouts of hamburgers and drinking only water. The stream of words about dieting coming from my mouth is copious, lengthy, loud, and BORING! But I proudly announce "I am on a diet, watch me roar!!" Whatever I am into...becomes an obsession.

So just imagine when I started running and my weight began drop and my body shape began to change and I went from staggering down the shoulder of the road near my house to running for 30 minutes non-stop for the first time!!! Imagine eating all the healthy food I wanted to eat and still seeing the scale drop. Imagine even eating the occasional cookie or chips or fries and still watching the scale plummet from 260 to 195. Imagine that I could now boldly and confidently declare I was a runner when I entered a 5K in my city and won 2nd place in my age division. Imagine the growth of this obsession when I ran 2 5k's in one weekend and lived to tell about it. Imagine getting involved in training for a marathon! Imagine what I thought about, talked about, dreamed about. Just imagine how this magnificent beast called Running began to grow inside me. I was a Runner! A Runner!!! Fat Mitch was now trim healthy and training for a marathon! People around me, while sick of hearing me talk about it, were proud of my effort...I was proud of my effort. I began to identify with running and the desire to run, the need to run. I was finally, a Runner. Finally.

Then....Betrayal!

(Listen to my emotions here) In one day I went from being a runner to being a loser! A Limper. When I was asked how the running was going I was embarrassed to say, "Well I injured my knee and I haven't been running for a while." I felt shame for not being able to run any more. Maybe because I had talked so much about it, reveled so freely in the joy of it all, was so bold as to identify myself as a runner, to announce I was traing for the Disney Full and now I was just a limper. Betrayed.

My running friends just sort of looked at me with that "Aww you can't run anymore, I understand how you feel, except I can still run and in fact I ran 15 miles today so I am not a loser like you." look. Runners are a pack and while they may not always run together they hang together and talk running and the last run and the longest run and the best run stuff. I know I was a runner once. So when I became a loser, a limper I had no new stories to tell, I had no more identifying events to include me in the pack. I was out. I understand because I would do the same thing. The healthy runner cannot stop running because someone got injured and can't run anymore. This is not the Marines. Its just running so I understand. But the healthy do not understand the limper's pain. So I was betrayed by my body and misunderstood by my pack. In my head I was alone.

Talk about an identity crisis!! I just wanted to be a runner. And there is one identifying mark for all runners...they run. I could not run, so therefore I was no longer a runner. I was crushed by this betrayal. While my knee pain worsened somewhat, my emotional pain grew exponentially. Every time my knee would twinge in pain it would send a signal to my brain that said..."Loser! You will never run again." It was not long before I began to believe it. So when my weight began to climb I went to the local gym and used the elliptical trainer and stationary bike to try to keep some level of fitness. But you know what that did mostly? It reminded me that I could not run and all I wanted to do was run.

So I was on my way to Disney Marathon minding my own business when...

After an 18 mile training run that I was inadequately prepared for and inadvertently failed to cool down properly after I lost the non-painful use of my left knee for running... and that pain was soon to be knee to hip. Go figure my first 18 mile run...I finished it and felt great for the effort and now...nothing...no running. What a bummer. Can you relate?

The "if I run more than 2 miles pain" progressed to "if I sit still for more that 5 minutes pain" to "running, walking, sitting, or even trying to sleep on my left side at night pain".

So?? Was I:
Unprepared?
Just not built for running?
Pushing to hard?
Improper after care procedures?
Too old?
Doesn't matter because by this time I was a runner and I loved being a runner and I loved running. I have to run! I can't give this up! Are you with me?

I am writing about this today...but it happened Oct. 24. I was on schedule to have run 28 miles 4 weeks before Disney and then a proper wind down to the day and then...tragedy. My mind is still not right. Can you feel my pain?

I started running April 6th 2009. I remember the day well because not only was it the day I started running but it was also the day I realized that running was NOT for me. I couldn't do it!! I hated it, my calves hated it, my lungs hated it and even my mind hated it! But because I am who I am(and I was competing with some women in my office!) I kept doing the run 1 minute walk 1 minute program for that week and then the next week did the run 2 minutes walk 1 minute and so on until that warm October morning I walked out of my brothers house in Nokomis, FL and we set off on the journey. We had trekked the 12 mile run and the 15 mile run together and we would tackle this one together too. I had a great day! He had a not so great day. I walked away from the experience limping. He ran 27 miles two weeks later. Hmmm...so much for bragging that I beat him, but that's another story.

Now 9 weeks later. I recently ran 6 miles before my knee started to hurt and my dead ego allowed me to stop running at that moment. I was running 9:30 miles with an 8:52 in the middle for fun. It wasn't bad, I felt weak at the beginning and got stronger as I ran but when that old familiar pain started I was frustrated and hurt because now...I just want to run without the fear that my knee will start hurting. I remember those days...they were great an I took them for granted. I won't ever do that again.

I am not sure how I progressed from just wanting to run a little to keep my weight down to competing in 2 5K's to training for a marathon in less than 6 months(well I do know how I got into the Disney full..the 1/2 was already sold out!) but here I am and I want to run long...even in my pain I wonder what running an ultra would be like. Sigh...anyway...I am trying to let my leg heal...but its hard because running has no patience. It is there inside you all day wanting to be freed...to be loosed upon your favorite route, to be brought to bear upon some time or distance like a sword brought to bear upon a fearsome enemy. Running is a beast that rages inside your heart and when you cannot run it is tamed and muzzled and made to be timid...no longer a raging beast but rather a whimper. I miss the beast.