Zen and the Art of Water Running

Strange though this may sound, I find running in the water to be more interesting than running on a treadmill.

This is particularly odd given that "running in the water" involves my wearing a flotation belt like this one:

...hooked up to the side of the pool via an elastic tether, and using a running motion in the water to keep myself both moving and vertical. (As if the belt weren't silly enough, I've actually rigged a couple of small water bottles on it as well for my longer days like today, when I was in the water for 2.5 hours.) I'm literally running to nowhere here at various speeds depending on the day, and yet I find it fascinating. Why?

Part of it is anthropological, one might say-- from my vantage point, I can see (and hear) everyone who comes into the place. I go to the pool early in the morning, just as the first lap session of the day is ending, when a group of decided 'regulars' comes for their routine swims. They're all older than me, and many of them are women who seem to enjoy bobbing up and down with the use of pool noodles while chatting with one another. Trucking away in the deep end, I can blithely eavesdrop on their conversations at will, since pools are notoriously echoey places. The first day was particularly amusing, as everyone looked at me somewhat askance out of the corners of their eyes, unsure of exactly who this stranger was and just what she was doing. But they gradually bobbed on over in an ever-so-casual kind of way, and having ascertained that I was harmless, either asked outright or exclaimed loudly when they realized I was tethered and thus immobile, thus giving me the chance to explain. Now I seem to be accepted as a fairly constant fixture, if not quite one of the proverbial gang, which suits me fine-- we smile and say good morning to one another, and every so often one or two will come over and chat for a while as I churn away. It's all good fun, really.

Another part of this that I really like is the meditative quality-- like running outside, running in the water gives me a chance to let my body do its thing while my mind goes where it will. Oddly enough, I don't find myself daydreaming much: it really does seem to be an experience much like sitting in meditation, noticing things that come up as they come up, then watching them pass by. Refreshing, in a way.

An old Zen joke goes: "Don't just do something, sit there!" If I had to choose between treadmill running and my morning pool sessions, at the moment I'd pick the pool, dorky accessories and all. I may be going nowhere, but I'm enjoying the trip.

In which I am not Amy Winehouse.

Not only do I not sing neo-'60s soul music, nor come from the UK nor have massive beehive hair, but I do indeed go to rehab-- if not quite as a result of having overconsumed various intoxicants.

Ah, physical therapy-- or perpetual torment, whichever you prefer. The exercises per se are no problem-- in fact, I do many of them already and others are similar to ones I either do or have done in the past as part of my strength training routines. But the massage... OK, I know deep tissue therapy or whatever it is is breaking up the various knots and accumulated stresses of my overworked muscles that have had to overcompensate for my unhappy tendon, but damn, people, that hurts. My PT (=Personal Torturer, a moniker that amuses her) seemed a tad disappointed that she hadn't bruised me the first time she laid hands on the afflicted area; I make no predictions as to whether she's succeeded this time. Back I go on Friday; if at first she doesn't succeed, no doubt she'll try again. I just remind myself to breathe and tell myself firmly that it's helping to fix things.

Happily, I can report that my foot itself feels considerably better today after a full day yesterday in my walking cast, so I shall continue wearing said boot until told not to in the hopes that the improvement continues. Besides, I realized yesterday as I step-clunked my way down the hall at work (carefully, as they'd just waxed the floor and that shit is near-impossible to walk on in a cast) that once I'm on my feet again, so to speak, the boot-cast will make an excellent prop if I ever get to play Richard III. Good to know.

The Anatomy Lesson; or, when RICE is no longer enough.

A complicated thought, this title. To some folk, the first part might suggest this:

(Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, 1630)

Very 'period' to my area of study,  but not quite specific in this case. First of all, I'm not dead (add Monty Python reference here), and secondly, the portion of my anatomy in question isn't my abdomen, but my right foot. Specifically, an area less than an inch square.

I'm not at all sure when the actual instigating moment was, but at some point last year, I must have stepped wrongly off a curb (whether walking or running) or somehow leaned a little too far to the right-- a not unusual circumstance in these days of uneven pavements-- but then quickly righted myself and moved on. That moment probably is what turned into a small bout of tendonitis-like pain across the top of my foot. So I paid attention and gave my foot a rest from running over the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend by using the cross-trainers at the gym instead, which didn't produce pain. Returned to running after the break, and all was well. Cross-trained, stationary cycled, and ran on treadmills over the Christmas holidays-- no problem.

Returning to the U.S., I went for a 12-mile run the day after I got back (both to get back to running and to blow the travel-induced cobwebs out of my brain). Run went fine, but my foot was somewhat sore by the end of it. Hmm. Did my speed session as usual two days later: foot sore again. OK, so applied RICE (a common acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation-- the usual first steps one takes when faced with a potential injury) and stayed away from running for several days, missing my scheduled tempo run. By last Sunday, the foot felt fine, so I headed out for my longest run ever: 14 miles. First seven miles, no problem. By the start of the second half, foot started feeling a bit grumpy. By the end, it was seriously sore-- but by the time it hit that point, I was a mile from home and had two options: finish the 14-miler, or walk home (tired, increasingly cold, and sore) from where I was.

I finished the 14 miles. But I knew my foot was NOT happy with me. So off I went to my doctor on Monday, who had my foot x-rayed: nothing broken. (Yay!) She also gave me a recommendation to a sports medicine orthopedist, and by dint of a lucky cancellation, I got to see her on Friday.

Turns out that the patellar tendon attaches to a very small area of the outside of the foot, and chances are it's that which is unhappy, along with some teeny tiny muscles in that area. (It's really rather odd: nothing is swollen to the naked eye, no discolouration, no outward sign of injury, and you can bang on my foot all day without my reacting until my foot is twisted in one particular fashion...THEN you can induce pain in the area.)

Here's where the "lesson" comes in, though: the injury itself isn't actually the most important issue here. The greater concern is what might happen to the rest of my body as it strives to compensate for this small area as it heals: the sports doc was very clear that we need to address things as quickly as possible so that I don't get really hurt somewhere else (in my left foot, my right hip, or wherever else) due to my body's reaction to this very small injury. (Not surprisingly, my calf muscles are very tight on both sides, my ankles rather stiff, and she seems to think I need flexibility and strengthening work on both ankles and hips.). So an immobilizing boot for walking, NSAID cream for the area (I didn't even know NSAIDs-- think Tylenol or ibuprofen-- came in topical form), and physical therapy are in order. (Plus, I hope, a gait analysis and whatever advice I need to make sure this never happens again: new/different shoes? Orthotics? We'll see.)

It fascinates me that such a small area can affect the whole body so very profoundly: if ever one needed an example of everything being connected, here it is.

I did ask about the marathon, which is scheduled for March 20-- she looked at me levelly, and said if I responded really well to physical therapy, then maybe, just maybe, I can see about increasing mileage. But at the moment, she'd call the race "questionable": "Right now, I doubt that you could walk it," she said. Ouch, but I do so appreciate medical folk who realize that I want to know the real deal, not some tiptoeing around the issue-- the doc's office is actually the group of ortho specialists for various local professional teams, so they're used to talking to athletes. [Funny moment: the doc's fellow came in to chat with me and examine my foot at first, so I told him my athletic story-- triathete and dancer, training for first marathon, used RICE already, etc.-- while he looked at my x-rays. We chatted sports, he had me do various things, then as he left he asked casually, "What do you do for a living?" and I told him. That gave him pause: I don't think he'd anticipated "I'm an English professor" as my answer. Hee.]

As disappointing as it would be not to do the marathon, I've actually decided to look at this as a good thing. First of all, it's temporary, fixable, and if the treatment means I get to strengthen weaknesses I hadn't realized were there, all the better. Secondly, I'm still able to train: swimming and biking are fine, and I can do deep-water running in the pool. So no need to go insane from enforced immobility, even if the walking boot thing is a maze of velcro and a pain to take off and put on getting in and out of cars (I can't drive with it on). This is all excellent: a stir-crazy WT is NOT a happy WT.

But it's the third benefit that intrigues me the most: this injury forces me to slow down-- not that I've ever been a speed demon in terms of racing, but in the sense that I tend to operate quickly in general: I think quickly, I speak quickly (just ask any of my students!), I walk quickly, and I move quickly. With this, I literally can't do some of those things, and that enables me to work on being more mindful of exactly what I'm doing as I'm doing it. I went to yoga class yesterday-- a beginner class rather than the more advanced one I'd signed up for and usually go to-- and my fabulous teacher not only graciously allowed me to switch classes, but nodded in understanding when I explained that my yoga at the moment seems to be about that increased mindfulness, about feeling exactly how everything is connected and what parts of me are affected by each pose, listening to the quieter voices within. (Chuckle: she remarked, "You need a blog!" and I laughed and told her I already had one-- here it is, T!)

So the lesson here is not, in fact, about anatomy-- or not just that, at least. It seems to be a much longer-term one about listening and feeling. 'Twill be interesting to see how it progresses.