NYT: Coping (or Not) With Injuries in Training for Marathon (Read 680 times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/sports/othersports/27marathon.html NYT: Coping (or Not) With Injuries in Training for Marathon By GINA KOLATA Published: September 26, 2008 It’s the fall marathon season, as runners around the world know all too well, and as the training miles pile up, countless runners are feeling unexpected aches and pains — and desperation. Will they recover in time to continue training and run 26.2 miles? Should they try to run through the pain to stay on schedule? Or would it be better to just give up on the marathon? Well, injured runners, I feel your pain. I am one of you, the anxious masses of aspiring marathoners who are finding out that the journey to the start line may be more painful than the run to the finish. I am entered in the New York City Marathon, scheduled for Nov. 2, and in my moments of pain and panic I knew I would never be ready. But I tried just about any remedy that might relieve the pain in my right forefoot, which has been screaming with each step since Sept. 8. I wanted to run through it, but even though I can tolerate pain, this was something else. Excruciating. What to do? Giving up on the marathon was never an appealing option. So I entered the world of injured but determined runners. My marathon plans began in July 2007, when I found a distance running coach, Tom Fleming, who won the New York City Marathon twice, in 1973 and 1975. And I found friends to run with. A year ago, I ran in a half-marathon in Philadelphia and loved it. As soon as registration for the New York marathon opened, I signed up. So did my son and so did my friend and running partner, Jennifer Davis, who has run more than two dozen marathons and races beyond 26.2 miles, including a 100-mile race last winter, which she won. She entered the New York race so we could run together, and she said she would keep me on pace. Her commitment only added to the desperation factor when I was injured and could not run. So I sent an e-mail message to Chris Martin, a triathlete who lives in Lawrenceville, N.J. Earlier this year, he sustained a stress fracture in his shin and could not run for three months. Three months later, he had a personal best in an Ironman triathlon. How did he do it? Pool running, he said, which maintained the running “feel,” along with intense workouts on an elliptical cross-trainer to maintain cardiovascular fitness. In pool running, the athlete wears a flotation belt to remain upright and runs for an hour or more in the deep end of a pool. He cautioned that “it is really easy to slack and barely get a decent workout.” He wore a heart-rate monitor in the pool to measure his effort, recognizing that heart rates are about 15 percent lower in the water. That is because the heart does not have to work as hard against gravity to pump blood. And he typically ran for at least an hour at a time. Martin, though, is not entirely won over. “The bottom line is that the water running and training on the elliptical running machines were stopgap measures to limit the damage to my running fitness,” he wrote. Dr. Alan Garber, a professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University, tried a similar routine. His injury was torn ligaments in his ankle, sustained when he stumbled on a tree root while running down a steep hill. Garber entertained himself in the pool by listening to music and recorded books on his iPod, including the entire unabridged version of “War and Peace.” When he got back on the road, he said, he could run, but his quadriceps were weak when he ran downhill. Still, he prevailed, running the Big Sur International Marathon just four months after his injury. “My time (3:26) was only one minute slower than the year before,” he wrote in an e-mail message. So I joined a gym (my third) solely for its pool. Jen belongs to that gym, too. She and I began pool running, jumping into the pool with our running clothes and shoes on just after doing the elliptical. “I’m determined to get you ready for that marathon,” Jen said. She proposed a trifecta — as soon as I can run, I’ll go as far as I can with her, then we will hop on the ellipticals and work out long enough to attain two and a half hours of training. Then we will plunge into the pool and run there. But after two weeks my foot was getting worse. I rode 100 kilometers (or about 62 miles) on my road bike Sunday. On Monday, I could walk only on the side of my foot. On Monday night, I could walk only on my heel. On Tuesday, I gave up and saw an orthopedist, Dr. John Kennedy at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. He gave me the bad news. The bike ride was really bad for the injury. And the injury, he says, is a serious stress fracture, a hairline crack in a metatarsal bone of my foot. Even under the best scenario, I’m out for at least a few more weeks — the only exercise allowed is swimming, not even pool running, not even the elliptical. In the meantime, I’ve deployed yet another weapon in my fight against marathon-training pain: a portable ultrasound machine that is supposed to speed bone healing by 40 percent. Even if that works, the New York marathon is no longer within reach. But there is a marathon in Jacksonville, Fla., at the end of December. Jen said she would run it with me.

They jumped in the pool wearing their running clothes and shoes??

They jumped in the pool wearing their running clothes and shoes??

In a swimsuit.... You are suspended by the belt and you just pump your arms and move your legs just as in running. It's best to try to run against against a current but sometimes difficult in a big pool. I am going to do some pool running for a while also while my torn muscle heals.... The BIG reason I joined our Gym was because they had pools and lots of good quality cardio equipment. I hope to be back on the road really soon....

I ran my best marathon when I spent several weeks aquajogging because of a foot injury then running three days and in the water three days while I built up my miles. It helps to race against the pool clock to keep it a workout, and make the time go faster.