Running on Empty

I ran all the time as a kid -- on the baseball diamond, the football field (which were the same patches of grass at the school next to my house), the street hockey rink (?), at recess. But it wasn't until I was in college that the thought occurred to me of running for no other reason than to stay fit.

Even then, I didn't stick with it. I would run occasionally during the summer, and lift some weights and do push-ups and sit-ups, but I never stuck with it during those years.

I always wanted to be one of those people who ran year-round, no matter what the weather, or how sick or hungover I was. I wanted to have those tight calves and the lung capacity of a horse.

After college, I hiked, went on walks or rode my mountain bike every so often, but I didn't run for many years. After I got married I did a little bit of running, but then in April 1998, seven months after my wedding, I ruptured my Achilles tendon.

Six months after undergoing surgery and rehab, I decided to try running again, but I decided to commit myself to it a little more. The first time I went out, I barely made it half a mile before I had to stop for fear my lungs were going to expel themselves out of the top of my head.

I kept at it, and before too long I was regularly going a few miles, a few times a week. I even had favorite running gear for the colder days: a white sweatshirt that my Uncle George had given me as a Secret Santa gift a few years before. It said "Be alert. The world needs more lerts" on it. I wore it inside-out.

I can't say I ran regularly through the winter, but I definitely stuck with it, on and off, for the longest I'd ever done it. In 2000, Beth and I bought our first house, in Boston's West Roxbury neighborhood, and I continued to run.

In April 2001, I ran my first road race, a 10K in Dedham, Mass., called the James Joyce Ramble. I ran with my buddy Dave, a seasoned runner. Along the course at random points, there were kids doing Irish step dancing, and people dressed in period costumes reading from James Joyce books. It was a great time. After the race, Dave took care of me, fetching me a beer and a donut.

I became enamored of running and doing races. I ran a few 5K's, and then decided to try a half marathon, slated for October 2002.

I ramped up my runs through the late summer and into the fall, and felt good. I knew I should do some sort of cross training or strength training, but I didn't. I finished the half marathon in just under two hours, which I was excited about.

I ran that same race, the BAA Half Marathon, the next two years, and did pretty well. I ran the Ramble and other, shorter races in the next few years.

In 2005, when I turned 40, I decided I'd had enough of the softball I'd been playing for a few years, and give baseball a shot. I'd played Little League and Babe Ruth for seven years, and really missed hardball action.

I played for four years and had a great time, but I managed to injure something each year. The first year it was my groin/abductor muscles. Over those few years I also had hamstring, quad and more groin issues.

I did some physical therapy after the first injury, and strength training on my own at the YMCA off and on during those years. I continued to run on a somewhat regular basis.

I stopped playing baseball in 2009 because it was taking too much time from my family on Sundays in the summer. I got into a more regular running groove, and decided that, after several years off, I would run another half marathon.

I heard about a new race, the Chilly Half Marathon, being run right in my town, Newton, in November. I decided to train for it.

Once again, I had little problem extending my runs. I got up to between 11 and 12 miles a few weeks before the race, then tapered off. I thought about strength training, but didn't do it.

My first Chilly went very well. The weather was cool and I ran a pretty good time, somewhere right around two hours, although I don't remember if it was just under or just over.

In 2011 I decided to run the race again. And once again I blew off any kind of cross training and strength work. The training went pretty well, although I began to feel the miles in my left quad.

I finished the race but was pretty sore and stiff by the end. The pain and discomfort lingered for a few weeks, so I took a break from running. In addition to my quad, I was feeling pain in my groin and weakness just above my left knee.

I found myself wishing that I'd done some strength training.

Over the next several months I alternated between resting or going for walks, and testing things out by going for runs of two or three miles. There were times when I didn't feel much, if any, pain during and after a run, and I was encouraged. Other times, however, I made it only a mile or so before I had to walk, with a bit of a limp.

Finally, last fall I went to my primary care doctor for a physical, which I was overdue for anyway. He said I was in good health, but that my running career was probably over.

I decided I needed a more informed opinion, so I contacted a sports medicine practice. The orthopedist didn't see anything in my x-ray, so he prescribed six weeks of physical therapy.

The therapist theorized that I had a hip condition, although my groin was giving me the most trouble. After six weeks, I realized that not only was my groin not improving, but my hip and back were feeling worse.

Back to the orthopedist, who said I needed to get an MRI. Two weeks after I did so, I returned to his office and he told me I had a tear in my left hip labrum, and that he was sending me to a surgeon.

That guy took a look at the MRI, concurred with the torn labrum, and gave me the low-down on surgery and recovery. Unfortunately, I'll be on crutches up to six weeks after the July 25th surgery. And then I'll need more PT. When I asked the doctor if I'd be able to return to running at some point, he said, "If you were an elite 48-year-old runner, I'd say yes. For the rest of us, however, we need to do something new."

I've been walking two or three times a week for a while now, and while I have some discomfort afterwards, it's manageable. So walking is a post-surgery option. But I don't get enough of a cardiac workout doing that. Swimming seems like a good option, but I know it'll take a long time to build up to a point where I don't hate it.

Biking? I'll have to talk to the doctor and therapist about it.

If you've made it this far, congratulations. Here's a Jackson Browne song that I don't like that much, but which is sorta appropriate:

Hip

Yes, I know that based on the title of this post, you're expecting a treatise on the latest cool music or beard style or organically raised vegetable I've discovered or cultivated or raised.

But, no, this entry is all about aging and the breakdown of the physical body. Or at least about how a guy with flat feet, a repaired Achilles tendon and a family history of leg and back issues is dealing with turning 48.

Nearly two weeks ago I was diagnosed with a labral tear in my left hip. I'd been experiencing pain in my left adductor/groin area since November 2011, after training for and running a half marathon. Over the next 10 months or so I alternately rested, went for walks or short runs and went to the gym. The pain in my groin, and sometimes in my hip and lower back, persisted.

Finally, last fall I went to my primary care doctor for an annual physical. He didn't have much to say about my groin pain, other than, "I think your running career is over. That's OK, you can swim."

I needed more information and clarity, so I made an appointment at a sports medicine practice. The orthopedist there took X-rays, which didn't show anything. He prescribed 6-8 weeks of physical therapy.

Although I was complaining of adductor discomfort, the therapist figured that my hip was the problem. He began to focus his efforts on that area, as well as my lower back. After going twice a week for six weeks, I wasn't noticing any improvement, so he wrote up his observations and sent me back to the orthopedist.

The ortho told me to get an MRI. That experience was quite a trip, and not in a good way. Oh, it wasn't that bad, but sliding into a giant metallic tube that makes awful, grinding and bumping noises for 25 minutes with nothing to do but contemplate the avant gardiness of it all isn't my idea of fun.

After a week off with Beth and the kids in Vermont, I returned to the ortho to get the MRI results. The good news: "You don't have arthritis in your hip. The bad news: you have a tear in your labrum," which is the soft tissue that holds the ball of your hip joint in its socket.

I was experiencing all of the symptoms: a "catching" sensation in my hip, pain in my groin, stiffness or limited range in the hip joint. I've also been feeling weakness just above my left knee, and sometimes a sense of weakness all the way down to my foot.

And, as of Friday, I've got severe back spasms that make me walk like an old man. I've had pain like this before, but it hasn't been this bad in quite some time. I'm trying not to get too bummed about all of it. I've got an appointment with a hip surgeon at the end of this month, and I'm hopeful that before too long I'll get arthroscopic surgery and be on the road to more normal activities.

I'm not sure I'll return to running, although I'd like to. Perhaps I will have to take up swimming.

None of this comes as a surprise to me. Ever since undergoing surgery in 1998 to repair an Achilles tendon that I ruptured playing basketball, I've known that my left leg was more susceptible to stress and strain than my right. Add to that my two flat feet, weakened abdominal muscles from hernias I had as a kid, and my left leg is under some serious strain.

AND...my father also ripped (but didn't rupture) his Achilles tendon when he was younger (although older than I am now), and has suffered from arthritis and other issues with his back and knees for the last few years at least.

While I'm a bit depressed that I seem to be following in his footsteps at too early an age, I'm confident that surgery and rehab will get me back on track. In the meantime, I need to keep myself in as good a shape as possible, which means doing exercise and strengthening work, and not eating and drinking like a pig.

Now, who wants to talk music, beards and vegetables?

Inspiration

When I first started reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running I got bummed out. A friend had given the book to me because he knows I'm into running and writing, occasionally at least, and Murakami's book is about how he connects the two.

I didn't know Murakami from a pothole, but I was anxious to read the book. The book is thin, and after just a few pages I could tell that I liked the author's style, albeit style translated from Murakami's native Japanese.

But after just a few more pages I reached a crossroads: keep reading and feel really bummed about the fact that I haven't been writing much, and that I've put my running on hold because of a nagging groin injury, or plow ahead and try to get something out of it.

I chose the latter path and am certainly glad I did.

Murakami has an easy way of writing, but he's very straightforward about how hard he works at it. "I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity," he writes. "To write a novel I have to drive myself hard physically and use a lot of time and effort."

He puts the same effort into running. During a 62-mile race, he feels his entire body breaking down. And as so many long distance runners know, Murakami's battle was as much mental as it was physical. He comes up with a mantra to get himself through the roughest miles: "I'm not a human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead."

Repeating these lines and narrowing his focus to the three yards in front of him, he plods forward. Finally, at mile 47, he "passed through something....After that, I didn't have to think anymore."

He is upfront about aging (he was 56 when he started writing the book; he's 63 now) and how he has to lower his expectations for training and running or doing triathlons. He admits to his quirks (he can be somewhat anti-social, not unlike a lot of writers, yours truly included), discusses a few hobbies (he's a major, major record collector) and makes a book about running and writing flow by very easily and quickly.

I certainly plan to read some of his fiction now that I've read his memoir.

As for what I got out of the book, there are two answers. First, I realized that I have to keep myself in shape until my groin feels better, so recently I started going to the gym regularly for the first time in five years. Second, I started working on a memoir of my own.

I know, I know, the memoir market is tighter than Monty Burns' wallet. Everybody and their brother, mother, sister, father and backwoods cousin has put out a book in recent years talking all about drug addiction and recovery, setting up schools in Afghanistan, traveling to Venus with their pet monkey, ad nauseam.

So what do I have to add to all this? I don't know, but I'm working on it.

I'm mining material I used for some of the stories in my first book, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity. Yes, I'm churning through the tale of my four-month odyssey in 1988 on the road from New England to New Mexico and back.

Four years ago I posted a 10-part series on my old (but still active) blog, DaveBrigham.com, looking back 20 years to the trip I took with three buddies in a 1977 Dodge Tradesman van. I remember at the time that my buddy Jay Kumar said something along the lines of, "You should put that stuff together into a book."

Well, it takes me a while, but I do listen to my friends. My buddy Ric Dube, like Jay, a former coworker at Webnoize, told me after reading some of the original versions of my (C)rock Stories, that if I could get 15-20 really good ones, I'd have a book.

I've been having fun going through my original blog post and adding tons of details from my journal, two newspaper articles I wrote during my journey, and from my cobwebbed memory. I'm also adding background info about places we visited, as well as updates about some of them, and delving into my childhood, my personality and my previous experiences and how they played into the trip.

Ideally, I'll publish the book as an ebook. Thanks for the inspiration, Haruki.

(I wrote this post a few weeks ago and in the meantime have finished Murakami's book and have moved on to Jack Kerouac's On the Road: The Original Scroll. After college, and before going on my above-referenced road trip, I read the originally published version of the classic book, which edited out the names of Kerouac's friends, as well as many (if not all) of the sex. I'm thoroughly enjoying this livelier version.)