Feb 28, 2004 Playing It Smart By Laurel Park :: Views- 1577

Anyone who has ever laced up a pair of running shoes has probably experienced at least one injury of some kind. It's almost a rite of passage: One is not truly a runner until one has been injured. Veteran runners have a mental typology of various injuries ranging from novice (shin splints, twisted ankle, tendonitis) to hard-core (stress fracture, osteitis pubis, chondromalacia). Certain injuries seem to hit every runner at one time or another. I have yet to meet even a semi-serious competitive runner who has not had at least a minor case of plantar fasciitis.

Hand-in-hand with this propensity for injury is the unwillingness (or at least great reluctance) to take the necessary rest time in order to allow the injury to heal. "I'll try to run through it" ranks as one of the great intelligent statements of all time. Nothing like a brisk 10 miles to cure whatever is ailing that knee! In the vast majority of cases, "running through it" is simply a way to guarantee that the injury will persist, or get worse, or require an ever-extending period of recovery. Yet despite recognizing this on an intellectual level (most runners are, after all, fairly bright people), it is much harder to accept on an emotional level. For most people, myself included, running isn't so much an activity as a way of life. The thought of having to give up my daily run - even for a little while - is a definite downer.

It's especially hard to back off when the injury has the audacity to appear shortly before a race. It's one thing to skip a workout or two, but it's quite another to miss a race. There is an additional psychological component tied with racing, regardless of whether it's the Olympic Trials or a local Kiwanis fun-run. This component goes beyond the loss of the non-refundable entry fee. Races are trained for, looked forward to, and carefully planned. It is hard to go from participant to spectator, particularly when the transition is involuntary. Yet this is where many defenses break down and the intricate games of mental justification take place. "If I take Thursday and Friday off, I ought to be able to get through the race on Saturday"; or "If I take the first mile easy, I'll be fine the rest of the way,"; or - my personal favorite - "If anything starts to hurt I'll drop out." Well, you know that something is going to hurt and for most people it's harder to drop out of a race than to skip it altogether. There is something about racing that affects a runner's sense of judgment and risk. Behaviors that are clearly irrational under normal circumstances seem much less so when a race is involved. This phenomenon was nicely illustrated by a friend of mine, who last summer brought me firmly to my senses when I admitted that I was thinking of entering a money race in Grand Rapids even though my lower back was still giving me problems. "Would you hesitate to pay $200 if you found a doctor who could cure your injury forever?" my friend asked. "Of course not!" I replied. "Well," she said slowly, "then why would you risk making it worse just to win $200?" I kept that little exchange in mind and it provided an element of reason to all my subsequent racing decisions.

Unfortunately, I've known a lot of people who've looked back on some of their racing decisions with 20/20 hindsight, wishing they had it to do over again. Many years ago an acquaintance of mine opted to run the Crim 10-Mile despite a nagging case of plantar fasciitis. His training had been focused on the Crim and he had hopes of placing in his age group. He did finish the race, but it took several months, including four weeks in a cast, to repair the damage. I don't know whether he placed in his age group and I'm not sure he remembers, either. He does, however, clearly recall being carried from his car to the living room sofa upon arriving home after the race. More recently, another friend finally agreed to see an orthopedist about the nagging pain in her foot. She'd been struggling with the pain for nearly a year and despite urging from friends had delayed seeking a medical evaluation, thinking it was just a persistent muscle strain. After hobbling through the final two miles of a very competitive 8K (a race in which she'd hoped to place), she finally admitted defeat and scheduled an appointment. The resulting bone scan revealed a serious stress fracture, doubtlessly made worse by all the running she did after the pain first appeared. She is getting treatment but the long-term prognosis is not good and her days of doing marathons are almost certainly over.

In my own recovery I've tried hard to find the right balance between enthusiasm and intelligence. Enthusiasm is the desire to go out and see how a brisk 6-miler feels, while intelligence is the realization that my back probably isn't ready to handle that quite yet and chances are I'll pay for it later. Some people would call that "playing it safe," but most athletes I know (except baseball players) have a serious adverse reaction to the word "safe." "Safe" implies comfort, security, and an unwillingness to dig deep and put yourself on the line. When I think about "playing it safe" the first thing that comes to mind are the qualifying rounds at championships meets, where a collection of 4:00-milers crawl around the track at 4:30 pace for three and three quarters laps and then come furiously to life in the final 100. The post-race interviews all sound the same: "I just wanted to play it safe and qualify for the final."

Rather than playing it "safe," I prefer to think of my self-imposed limits as "playing it smart." "Playing it smart" reminds me to do the right thing and to delay instant gratification in favor of long-term success. It also reminds me that I have a plan, and that following that plan will eventually bring me to my goal of running competitively again.

Last year I accompanied my husband to a race that I desperately wanted to run. It was a beautiful day and several of my friends were there. The race distance, however, was about a mile longer than my daily run at that time, and the course included stretches of gravel road and a soft, muddy trail - two surfaces that would play havoc with my fragile back. The risk, I decided, just wasn't worth it. As I stood along the sideline waiting for the race to begin, a friend of mine jogged by. "Ah," he said with a smile. "Playing it safe?" "No," I responded firmly. "Playing it smart!"