Running and Screaming

Running Screaming

About  a year or so ago I decided to start putting some serious work into my body.   I was already pretty fit by the average person’s standards, a state I’d reached by a slooooow but mostly steady progression throughout the handful of years prior.  But after being a regular gym-goer since 21 without any remarkable change, I decided I didn’t want to go through the gym motions anymore.  I wanted to stand out!

I started attending my brother Steve’s Crossfit classes; sparingly, but enough to get some ideas.  He’s a great instructor and Crossfit is a great way to give myself a boost with some new ideas and get a good push from someone else when I’ve been failing to push myself.  But I mostly prefer to do my personal workouts alone, so when I’m not in need of help I’m usually alone. 

I started running…first a little, then a lot.  And always on the treadmill.  As I gained the endurance to take longer and longer distances, I began to escape into running with music bumping in my ears and for a while it was the greatest thing ever.  By July of last year I was running like crazy, although still a sad speed for the average person.  I have a vocal cord condition that has been present since birth called vocal cord paresis, and though my ability to take in adequate amounts of oxygen on my inhale has improved over the course of my life it’s been an uphill struggle learning to maintain a breathing pattern during cardio.  But I progressed in that area and once I had the ability to run for set times I started playing with speed.  I went faster and faster, not only burning calories but burning off all the negative thoughts I had going at the time.

 (Brief explanatory side note: In early June my boyfriend of 2.5 years and I decided mutually to end the charade of what was left of our relationship, and in July my brother and his girlfriend of 10 years tied their knot.  A beautiful day for them and for myself, but I can’t say it didn’t hit me in a weak spot…pretty shitty timing but better than having the ex in the wedding photos and THEN breaking up.  It can always be worse!)

Outside I was running. And running. And running. 

Inside I was screaming.  And screaming.  And screaming.

A couple of months ago I was down to a nine-minute mile, and had actually hit the 8:35 area a couple of times.  Then I started to get shin splints, mostly in the left leg but it affected both.  Once I finally faced the pain instead of continuing to run over it (did that for a good week and a half) I was out of the running game for 12 days.  I came back strong but started out slow, only to find my calves had stiffened immensely in the course of my shin splint healing—something had to take that weight while they were weak.  I continued to run, and run, and run, although still slower than before.  But eventually I started working in short sprints, and for a very brief period things seemed to be okay.  I was foam rolling my calves and stretching them daily, and it seemed to be helping. 

Then my knee started to hurt.  First it was just while running, and of course I just adjusted my stride a little hoping that would be enough, and was silly enough to let the adrenaline of a good workout fool me into thinking it wasn’t hurting me to keep running.  Soon my knee was actually hurting outside of the gym, and I decided I should stop (DUH!  We athletes can be so stubborn…and sometimes just stupid.  It should not have taken me this long to realize I needed to stop.  But I digress.)  and get some professional opinions on what was going on.  A friend who trains at my gym helped me out with stretching and brought to my attention the fact that pretty much EVERYthing in my legs was incredibly tight, particularly my Achilles’.  The backs of my knees would barely straighten, my hamstrings were weak and my ankle mobility was awful!  I was also squatting and crouching incorrectly, not while working out but in my day-to-day life.  As I do a lot of physical labor at work (I work for CVS but try to stay away from the registers in favor of merchandising) I felt SO stupid for never having thought much about my form there.  I’d adjusted the way I lift things but that was pretty much it, and my friend pointed out that the fact I was squatting and crouching so hurriedly all the time while working was probably the reason my knees were hurting.  Aside from the running, obviously, which I was also doing wrong!  Heel to toe was not the name of my game, and I was leaning back which led to my feet striking the floor in front of my body as opposed to underneath it.  Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Best and most valuable piece of advice I have to give so far as a would-be trainer: if you’re not sure about your form, DO NOT BE TOO PROUD TO ASK SOMEONE TO WATCH YOU.  If you want to correct yourself, have someone record you, but if you don’t know, just ask.  I wish I’d asked months ago for someone to comment on my form…one of the handful of things I could have done differently to prevent the irritation I’m dealing with now.

So now I’ve basically been resting my knees and stretching for the past week, and though it would help if I wasn’t on my feet for 8 hours five days out of the week, I’m feeling improvement and hearing less of those scary crackly noises when I bend.  But as a new runner who felt I was progressing so much, it’s been extremely frustrating pulling back and giving into the cold hard fact that if I want to continue running in the future, I have to start over now and recondition my whole lower body before I continue. 

As soon as I started resting and using low-impact moves to strengthen the muscles surrounding my knees, the pain started to recede within two days, although the tightness and a little pain are still creeping up by the end of a shift.  At least I'm on the right track again even if it is slow-moving, but I feel like I have a million things to remember.  Walk heel-to-toe. Stretch my calves in between throughout the day so that training myself to walk that way won’t cause them injury.  Never let my knees come out past my toes.  Okay so that's only three, but I have to say all this is definitely slowing down the rate at which I can work; luckily I’ve always worked fast and no one notices the difference.  Correcting bad form is not an easy task and it’s sure taking a lot of my patience, but on a positive note spending my shifts focusing on what I’m doing with my body is definitely making it easier to ignore how stupid and annoying customers can be and how incredibly tedious my job sometimes is.  All in all, I’m positive it will be worth the time I’m taking to relearn and correct what I’ve been doing wrong all this time. 

My biggest obstacle in conquering this problem: Stretching always sucks.  I’ve never enjoyed it and have always slacked on it in a pretty hardcore fashion, but now I’ve learned my lesson.  It may be painful and sometimes boring and time-consuming, and there may sometimes be screaming when I’m having a stiff day.  But maybe it’s better to learn to get that pain out in ways other than running, where I keep all my screaming inside. 

Knee pain: just another one of the reasons you can’t run from your problems.