It started back in the fall of 2011, when I noticed my
race pace had dropped almost a minute per mile in a 15k race I had run just a year earlier.
The hills were a little painful, as my ankle joint was stiff, taking longer to
“wake up” each run. My good friend John Spikes even posted earlier that I was
slowing down and my wife Kathy was speeding up. My self-diagnosis was that maybe
I was experiencing some early arthritis, so I just plugged on.
Two weeks later, I strained a right calf muscle, which is
always a nuisance to any runner. I spent the month of October icing and resting
my leg. I was busy coaching our school’s cross country team, so it was an
inconvenience not being out there running with my runners, something I have
enjoyed for more than 25 years. I was strong enough to run a Thanksgiving Day 5k,
although at 25:30, the pace was better than the 15k pace but much slower than earlier in the year. It was a small victory to race again after the calf strain.
The top of my ankle was still stiff through the past mild
East Tennessee winter, but my pace was still dropping. I was now at a 9:00 pace, and easy runs
were more like 9:30/mile. We signed up for our annual pilgrimage to Charleston to do
the Cooper River Bridge 10k on March 31, but my ankle began to bother me more and more. I
saw my orthopedic doctor, who said my posterior tibial tendon (PTT) was stretched out, and so I took almost 3
weeks off from running.
I usually celebrate birthdays with a celebratory five
mile minimum run. In 2001, I ran 24 miles on my birthday, but that was in
marathon training mode. However, in 2012, there would be no birthday run as I
honored the doctor’s orders for a few more days.
We reluctantly and sadly decided not to run the Bridge
Run, but we did run at the lnearby ake, and I had worked up to almost 5 miles during
that first week of being able to run. It was not fast or pretty. Kathy noted
that I still ran with a slight limp in my stride, although my ankle did not
feel sore, just stiff.
Our school had a track meet on April 3 at a local school,
so I decided to drive over and watch our kids run. I saw our discus team
warming up, but I noticed none of them were using a spin technique. I walked
into the cage and demonstrated a basic 360 spin in very slow motion. The third
time around, as I was showing the proper disc ‘explosion’ and release, my ankle popped, and
after I fell to the ground, I announced, “That is NOT the proper
follow-through”. I knew immediately it was the tendon. I could feel a huge knot
form next to the bone. I hobbled over to Laura Weisberg, our team’s volunteer
trainer (Thank God for these wonderful professionals who donate their time!),
and she had me come into her practice the next morning before dawn to get it
looked at and for some PT.
The next morning, she massaged it, iced it, and wrapped
it. My ortho had already put a call in to my ankle specialist for a referral on my
ankle, but my physical therapist called her to get me in the same day. Again, my gratitude goes
out to her for “fast tracking” me to the specialist, who examined the ankle and
ordered an MRI. Her pre-diagnosis was at least a partial tear of the PTT and a
possible stress fracture of the talus bone. Somehow, the possibility of never
running again was not a reality as long as it may only be a partial tear. After
all, I partially tore a hamstring and a piriformis before, and I was fine after
a few weeks in both cases.
Today, April 16, I sat in the examination room, awaiting
the doctor and the results from the MRI. She came in and smiled, asking if I
wanted the good news first. I was halfway hoped that she was only joking. I learned first that I did not have a stress
fracture in my ankle. Then she delivered the bad news: my posterior tibial
tendon was totally torn – in several places, much like a tire you see by the
side of the highway.
I know that my doctor knew how much I love running. She
stood outside the door with my papers for a long time before coming in. I
wonder if it is hard for her to find the right words to tell a person that
their life’s joyful expression will no longer be possible? I know that both my ortho and
physical therapist, both sent texts to “keep this man running at all costs”,
and “this man needs to run”.
However well-meaning their notes were, it could not have
made the surgeon's delivery of this news
easy. After she said my PTT was torn, she looked at me and eventually
said the words “no running”. The new tendon would be taken from the big toe. It is less
than a third the size of the PTT, and therefore cannot hold up under the impact
of distance running. Phrases like “no more marathons, half marathons, races and those long runs” all fell
like small bombshells into my psyche.
The shattering sound of my spirit being crushed made it
hard to really hear all the details of the post-surgery timetable, so I may be
a little off in my actual re-telling of what will follow my surgery.
As she talked, I was having a hard time absorbing her
words - no running. I will undergo surgery May 24. I will have two screws placed in my heel to turn my pronated foot into a more supine position due to the smaller FDL tendon grafted in from the big toe. I will be totally off my feet for 2
weeks, then 6 more on crutches or a knee walker (that will be some fun. Maybe I can learn to "surf" with it!). After that, we will evaluate and be in a boot and transition into a shoe over the next month or two while undergoing therapy. After 12 months of therapy, I should be walking pain-free in shoes full-time. 
The question of light running comes into play after six more months to strengthen the new but smaller tendon. The surgeon said that I should be able to do a light run of 2-3 miles, slowly building up strength in the supporting muscles and ligaments. Two or three miles at the most, and not every day or even every other day. What used to be a mild warm up will now be my destination distance.
No distance running. To me, it is like
telling me to stop loving my wife, my kids, and my two grandkids. It has now been a few
days, and I am still a littlenumb. I do not feel anger nor have I gone through much denial, yet a large part of me is grieving. It feels like I have lost a good friend, someone who has been with me in my most transparent moments. Running is so organic and yet so complex. I have created, debated, imagined, fought wars, and psychoanalyzed almost everything while on a long distance run. There is a clarity that occurs when one is on a long run that I have not equaled in any other activity. No running are two words that hurt in a strange, indescribable way.
And yet God knows I am thankful
for allowing me to run 28 years after having dual knee surgery in 1984, when I had the
meniscus removed from my right knee. The
doctor told me then not to run again. But I eventually did, after two years
off, and since then I ran 14 marathons and hundreds of races, notching almost
40,000 miles since then. This time is different, though. No other supporting
ligaments or muscles are in the ankle to assist this newer, tinier tendon from
my big toe.
After 66,052 recorded miles, 16 marathons, countless half
marathons, 10 milers, 10k, 15k, 25k, 30k, 8k, and 5k races, runs over
mountains, in many states on hundreds of miles of sidewalks, trails and highways, I am told “no
running”. How could two words carry such devastating and cutting power?
At present, I am walking in a boot and praying for a miracle. Like Eric
Liddell, I feel God's pleasure when I run, so I am again begging God to perform
another miracle and allow me to run after I am recovered. For now, it is time
to get into the mindset that I need the May 24th surgery to go well, to rehab my foot
religiously, and to try to find that new “thing” that will fit into the slot
where my joyful and therapeutic runs took place. I can swim and bike, but
neither provides the “high” I get every run I take. Drinkers have 'Happy Hour';
runners like me have always had a ‘Happy Hour’ out on a trail, road, mountain
or beach. I am hoping to spend some more ‘Happy Hours’ out there sometime in
2013. If you see me, I will be the one with bugs on his teeth, unable to close
my mouth due to excessive and continuous smiling. If, despite all efforts I am
unable to run again, I hope you will still see me with a smile on my face,
because it means God has replaced my deep love of running with something new
that provides me with joy and fulfillment.
But for now, I wait for the impending surgery, the 18 months of rehab, and the possibility of maybe jogging 2-3 miles. The words, "no running" are still not part of my new vocabulary, but it appears that the distance runner has died.
I still mean it when I say Happy Running.
