October did not go well in terms of mileage, and if I had once chance for a do-over in my life, it might be to properly KT tape my left tibia before running the Bear Chase 50 at the end of September.
Looking back at my notes, there definitely had been signs of the beginning of an injury, and I had ignored them. I thought, it's going to be just like last year. Once I start running Bear Chase, everything will be fine. I distinctly recall waking up in the dark on race morning and feeling pain as I climbed down the ladder from the camper and continuing to feel pain as I got ready. It is kind of an ordeal to get the KT tape on my leg, in the only way I've found that really does seem to help it. Especially when it is dark and cold, and you are in somewhat of a rush because you can't find anything you need (re: dark) and you have to walk a mile to the start line carrying all your stuff. So I compromised by doing it half ass: I put one strip of KT tape on my inner tibia, where the pain is most intense. I just didn't want to mess with the more complicated procedure of cutting additional strips of tape and then criss crossing them over the point of pain, and beyond that, dealing with the inevitable questions I get from people when I go out into the world looking like that. I just didn't want to answer any questions about my KT tape that day.
So I ran the race. And I haven't really been able to run since.
At first it was okay to have a rest, but after several weeks with little to no discernible change in the level of pain I had, it became a bit old. I went through several sessions of Rossiter treatment. It was eye opening in the sense that I realized my tibia pain was part of a series of larger structural issues, ranging from plantar fascia tightness, to hip imbalances (ah yes, a throwback to my great IT band injury of 2003, which kept me out of what was to be my first-ever marathon). I don't really know if Rossiter helped or not. It did seem like it was beneficial to work on loosening these areas and dealing with connective tissue problems, but I cannot for the life of me understand why after so many weeks of basically nothing, the point of pain on my inner tibia remained the same.
Was it a stress fracture after all?
Another week of doing nothing, and I just felt so gross. I finally decided to screw it, run through pain. It never got worse. Just this low level nag with every step.
So I've kept with that. Sometimes it feels fine, normal even. Sometimes the nagging is back.
39.8 miles this month, most of them in the last 2 weeks. 1304.23 year to date. I'm still 108.37 miles farther than I was last year at this time, with 195.77 more to go in 2015. I feel like I can probably do that, even if my leg stays the same, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
Thanks for reading.
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