Running to Think

Hello folks!
Yes indeed. I'm back. It has been long, it has been painful, discouraging, depressive. It basically tore me down. Two months of no activity (almost), dealing with a patellar tendon that really didn't want to be fixed, are not a joke.
I am not in the mood to shout out loud how I dealt with it. Read some of my recent posts and you will certainly find out. What else? Well, let me give you some numbers: 33, 44, 55, 66, 77. These are the kilometers that I covered every week, in the last 5 weeks. As every physiotherapist would advice "get back to the road, but do it sloooowly". I added some spicy intervals to my schedule only recently. The rest is happening on the trail, as usual.
So far so good.
Rehab is almost finished, even though it's always good to make some recalls once in a while in order to test the strength of those little tendons around the knees that seem to be so innocent but they are actually fundamental during the landing phase. And you know how important is landing well on the trail. Don't you?

Wish me luck!
Run happy ;)

What's the news? I could finish with no pain and no bad feelings about my knee whatsoever.
Then building up some mileage again and hopefully go back to the trail.

The last two weeks have been dedicated to fixing and recovering something that had all the characteristics to be a really bad injury. Without surprise I didn't feel psychologically down or, as many prefer to say, depressed, due to the fact that I couldn't run. I really didn't freak out this time. I rested. I ate more than I am supposed to and I had a great time. I also focussed more on my work at university. I can say that I enjoyed it so much. It was actually divine.
Not that I want to experience it again, of course. An injury is always an injury, after all.
The supervision of my physiotherapist had many invaluable benefits; it not only allowed me to recover in a very short time with respect to the other injuries I got in the past, but it also taught me some lessons I will hardly forget.
Every injury has its own story, and every injury teaches me something I will treasure for myself and my fellow runners.
Stressing the posterior tibial tendon should not be an easy task for an advanced runner. Fixing it and persuading a patient to go back on the road in less than 10 days is everything but easier for a physiotherapist. Injured runners usually want to go back on the road as soon as they can. Sometimes much sooner. Coming from an experience that forced me to stay at home for 6 months, I decided not to take the risk and throw my entire faith in Kathelijn, my physiotherapist. I don't know what will happen in the near future but I have the impression that she was right on many aspects.
I'll keep writing in first person here, even though I am sure that many runners will recognise themselves in my words.

I'm gonna skip week 02, for the reasons I explained in a previous post. I deliberately planned for a break between two intense training blocks. Anyway my body anticipated me with a stressed posterior tibial tendon that needed to be fixed any time soon.
Week 02 has been dedicated to resting, specifically active resting which consisted of a bit of cycling at the gym and loads of repetitions of the exercise you can see in the picture above.
According to my physiotherapist, I could have started running again on monday of week 03, after 7 days of no running. That's exactly what I did.

13/01/2014
20' run and the usual exercises. I headed to the gym a number of times to strengthen some muscular groups that needed some intervention, such as hamstrings and shoulders, upper back and abs. Running, running, running is not exactly what every runner should do. Sometimes we have to plan some workout sessions at the gym or, if you feel more like Rocky Balboa at the steps of a stadium in the suburbs of your city ;)

14/01/2014
30' trail in Sart Tilman in Liege, wearing trail running shoes. This session was characterised by the usual amount of hills and irregular terrain which made it a tough and quite stiff experience. At some point I was scared that the tendon would have collapsed again. I was really waiting for the running session to finish as soon as possible. Not fun, at all.

15/01/2014
Of course my physiotherapist kicked in, discouraging me from running on irregular terrain for at least one more week. She was quite diplomatic by avoiding the more appropriate "you are an idiot" conclusion.
I proceeded as requested by wearing softer road running shoes for about 40', finishing on the track and field. I still felt a bit of stiffness in both the ankles and mainly on the injured tendon. Way less than the day before, though.

16/01/2014
52' easy run with no pain whatsoever and much less stiffness. I felt like I could have been running for 3 hours more, which I didn't do. This time, I would have really deserved to be called an idiot.

17/01/2014
again 50' easy run in the city of Bruxelles. Sore calves and both tibial tendons quite tired are probably the result of a week of training and exercising. I better close week 2 here, with a saturday of rest.

18/01/2014
Rest


I wish I could say "the gipsy is back". But I still don't feel that comfortable.
Yet.

The week that follows an injury does not belong to the category of memorable days. I usually start eating, I feel a bit depressed, my day suddenly becomes longer than a year and I start liking people less. In return they seem to like me less too.
This is the moment when I start talking to very few and close friends about my mood and the status that affects my personality from the minute I wake up to the second I fell asleep again. I am aware of how annoying that can be.
Caroline is getting familiar with this other part of me, which is probably less fun to deal with. But I think she's doing great, her stuff being still at home.
Some days ago I talked to my fellow friend Sajjad, who shared a number of running experiences with me and being a runner as well knows exactly what I am talking about.
My question was very simple: how do you overcome the depression from not being able to run? His answer was brutally simple and it opened a new way of thinking about those periods of injury.
He said that the first three days are really annoying. But then it becomes slightly easier because I should start focusing on other types of work I have. Which is a good thing anyway.
"It's a reminder of how we always need change" he added.
"When I get injured and I have to stay at home, I am reminded of my vulnerability. You appreciate running much more when you start again".
I never read something more true.
Feeling down, experiencing a knockout and touching the ground with your face, if you know what I mean, is exactly why people need to stand up and keep moving.
Yearning for the motivation to motivate.
Indeed I was focusing on other things last week, such as a new book I bought, some academic papers in my reading queue for a long time. I even spent much more time in the kitchen, not just eating, but experiencing new recipes and experimenting with food.
With great results too. Caroline ate my food and was never hospitalised for food poisoning. That's great to start with :)
If it’s true that the seventh day God rested from all His work, then I’m clearly not a god.
Last week I felt busier than the days when I covered three-digit distances. On the other hand, my injury seems to improve everyday and my recovery phase being shortened with the help of a physiotherapist at the Sport Medical Advice Centre of the University of Leuven. We're working on strengthening the posterior tibial tendons and ankles with specific exercises and they're observing my running posture in search of some imperfection that might be lethal on the long distance of +50 km. Carefully inspecting images and videos of me running on a treadmill or during some drills on the track and field is quite a daily task.
My physiotherapist advised me to go back to run again after a week of therapy and exercises, completing up to 70% of my running schedule. Even in the presence of a small pain or stiffness I have been advised to continue, unless the pain doesn't go and it actually becomes more consistent. That's right! It's even better than any song in my mp3 player, and honestly I couldn't disagree with the medical prognosis for several reasons. One of which is that my physiotherapist is a runner herself.
Back to my state of depression (which by the way sounds worse that it really is), a good coincidence is that I got injured exactly at the beginning of my resting period. This means that I would have rested anyway, regardless of the injury. Hence the status of depression has been on a steady decline, with respect to the one I had right before running a marathon a few years ago.
I always have in mind quotes that try to motivate me even when I am sleeping and I remember of that anonymous genius who wrote "you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have". Well, I should let him know of another nice fact I will summarise in "you never become stronger if you never choose to give your body some rest".
Which is exactly what I've been choosing for.
Run happy!

Hello folks!
I remember the days when I was running like crazy as they were last week.
Wait, it *was* last week!!
Well, here I am, dealing with the first injury of 2014, even though whatever happens in my life is pretty much the first of the year, for the obvious reasons.
The day I was kind of pushing myself to the limits, coming from a 31 km trail and a lot of hills, then running a 10 km at the consistent pace of 3'50" per km I forgot about one important thing: the body does have limits.
Yeah yeah the mind can probably ignore them and most of the times it does that greatly. But sooner or later we have to face the physical limits of joints, tendons, sore legs and bones.

Long story short, at the end of the running session of the 1st January I felt a very acute pain somewhere in the left foot, just when I was running back home which means at the end of the training.
I stopped with the usual teeth-grinding face. Looked at the foot, touched it and I got the same irritating feeling I got in the last mile of the 32-mile run back in November 2013.
As usual I underrated the thing as "just stress", since the previous week had been quite stressful indeed.
The day before, the last day of the year, I felt quite tired even on a relatively slow pace. In retrospect I can say that was an alarm raised by one of those subtle safety mechanisms embedded in our body. Exactly, in retrospect...
So many years of running experience and I am still committing the same old mistake of ignoring the signs of the body and keep going. When I feel great I just go for it and push it to the limit, usually going beyond and paying the costly price of breaking, stressing, fracturing and disrupting. So wrong!!! So stupid!!! Bad Francesco, very bad boy!

It comes without saying that the 2nd of January it was a no running day for the reasons that I might have explained so far.
Resting and then resting again and again.
While by the end of the third day God had created a foundational environment of light, heavens, seas and earth, I instead did something of which God would just be rolling and laughing, such as running for 7 min and feeling that acute pain I am so used to.

The schedule had been made. Doctor working at the Sport Medical Advice Center of Leuven checked my foot and concluded that, with great fortune, it was not an inflamed tendon.
He found two main problems instead. It turns out that my left foot is less stable than the right one. This instability is what is letting the bones knock at each other with a terrifying and disgusting clacking noise whenever they are moved in the (un)proper way.
On longer distances this small instability- which might sound cute out of context - becomes a monster to deal with and usually to get kicked from very badly.

We already planned some sessions with the physiotherapist who will fix this instability with some specific exercises for the plantar fascia and posterior tibial tendon. Strengthening these bad boys should give me the stability I need to start training again and, hopefully, to participate to the ultra marathon next March.

Fingers crossed!

There are so many books about running out there and more and more runners who are switching from regular shoes to no shoes at all for a number of reasons that sound scientifically sound even though might easily be interpreted as hilarious and scary at the same time. They call it barefoot running. They do it on the track and field or grass. But those who consider themselves "the purest" can do it on the road or in the forest, even on water and rocks. The scariest part of it is that very few people are saying what should be said about barefoot running. I am not here to take part of one or the other team. I'm just writing according to my own experience, how I succeeded and, alas, how I got into trouble with barefoot running. When I was a professional athlete we were running barefoot on the grass, usually after a serious workout such as a very long distance or a tough interval training session, in order to minimise blisters and mainly to build some callosities under our feet, always softened by the sweat, the warmth or just by wearing shoes for a number of hours. We were used to run barefoot on the track and field and on fresh asphalt around 7pm in the evening since early-afternoon asphalt in southern Italy can be so hot that we could have cooked eggs for dinner on it. The exercise was performed also to strengthen ankle, tendons and calves. It was not longer than 10 (ten) minutes and it was considered an exercise indeed. Not a new running philosophy. Apparently things have taken another direction with some consequences that very few people are mentioning. For instance, the steady increase of injuries such as tendonitis and stress fractures, not to mention infections, heel and calf injuries. Stress fractures are the most common injuries caused by running barefoot. A stress fracture is basically an overuse injury. The muscles usually protect the bones by absorbing most of the shocks with the ground. But when the muscles are overtired, they no longer accomplish their function and the bones get stressed more than they should. Transferring stress to the bones can create small cracks that cannot be seen as all other regular fractures that are visible under the X-ray. When this type of stress is repeated a number of times of for longer distances it can not only be just painful but extremely dangerous. Even though there are runners who are claiming that they finished seventy and something marathons in their "birthday shoes" without any injury nor issues that needed any medical treatment whatsoever, there are many others who, on the other side, got serious problems and just don't write about it. I believe that the statistic that makes people believe that barefoot running is healthy, is quite biased indeed. According to my own experience, barefoot running is not healthy. I am making such a claim due to a series of injuries I got into, even after observing the so called rules of the barefoot runner such as slightly increasing the duration of the session or starting on a soft surface. Barefoot running is very risky if it is done as a philosophy rather than a 10-minute exercise. Especially if it is performed on modern urban streets. The damage that it can cause can be so severe to set a runner's career to an end in much less than three weeks. Since Born to run, a book that talks about the Tarahumara indians, has been published and become a best seller in the running community, barefoot running has become a sexy trend. So sexy to make more and more podiatrists really busy workers. The Tarahumara indians, who apparently run barefoot (this statement is not completely true, since they wear handmade protection soles) are different from us. They were born like that indeed. More importantly, they didn't relocate to New York city or Bruxelles. Their lifestyle is different from ours and their needs are really like chalk and cheese.  Habit is not genetics. The environmental factors involved in the Tarahumara community are fundamentally different from those we are used to deal with every day.
Moreover, our society evolved towards a different direction. The one in which we use shoes. Going back in time to a shoeless life will probably sound cool and alternative. That doesn't mean the way to go. Those who are practicing barefoot running without getting any injury are, on average, not very long distance runners. The very few who can run far represent such a negligible part of the running community that they cannot and should not be taken as successful examples. Even in the scientific community there are numerous doubts and lack of evidence about the effectiveness of barefoot running. Keep barefoot running as an exercise. Not a philosophy!
This, of course, is just personal advice.