Running for Your Life: Day One

“I would run through the forest until I was exhausted and could sleep; perhaps even as I ripped through ferns and over rotting logs, invisible now beneath the false second rain-forest floor, I would have some kind of vision. So I set off running. But before long, I only felt tired and stopped and turned around and walked slowly back. I had no faith in that kind of thing anymore, I realized. It worked in high school a few times even in college, but it seemed ineffectual now. So I put my clothes back on, descended past rubble and wire, concrete, brush, and stood over the wide fingerlings to twist each delicately under my heel.”

                                                      – “Legend of a Suicide,” David Vann
*

It’s been a week since the worst of it, getting better, hopefully more aware, when the blog steers into TMI, Too Much Injury. Best to put it this way, Monday (April 4), after hobbling with a cane to my second orthopedic surgeon, who while I was waiting for him in the waiting room of the New York University Medical Center, actually crooked his finger to beckon me back into a treatment room, never did call me by name, where after a perusal of my MRI results said I had a bad upper right hamstring tear with a hematoma the size of a lemon. Get some PT and strengthen up, PT will help with the pain because it’s not good for you to walk with a cane. Running? Yeah, you can run, but don’t think about racing. That tear will repair but at a certain pace you’ll feel it stretch; it’ll warn you that you can’t go as fast as you did before the injury. Blank stare.

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

I’m in glassed-walled corridor in the hospital, gardens on both sides, sitting upon a bench on my left buttock because the right is throbbing in pain, texting, then calling poor K, my daughter, who said all the right things but I’m still trying to handle the shock, earlier in the day in tears talking to my dad in Canada, and minutes later in a cab, driven by an elderly Indian man who I don’t know if he intuited my desolation or just saw that I had a lot of trouble getting into the back seat, the cane thrown in ahead of me, clattering against the pay-glass. We didn’t talk much, and I didn’t do much texting, only once to K. When he stopped in front of the house, he spoke of some folk method that once brought healing force to the hands, and especially fingers. I have only three dollars in my wallet, so he gets in back with me because I can’t figure out how to use the debit-card machine and uses his fingers to punch in a $5 tip.

“Feel better,” he says, as gather my cane, slowly step out on the curb and close the door.

“Thank you, sir.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head, as I stoop to look toward the driver’s seat. “In your mind,” he says, a healed finger touching his temple.

*

Thanks to smelly Tiger Balm patches on my upper thigh, an Ace bandage stretched over the worst of the tear, some kind of voodoo PT stretch-bandage that bridges my calf and lower thigh and stays on even in the shower, I’ve gone from not been able to tie my right shoe and cane-hobbling around Park Slope to three-quarters speed Manhattan walking without pain, only at rare times do I feel it, and although my new PT specialist B tells me I should stick with the mildest of stretches and wait a week before trying too much I’m today (April 6), nine days from holy terror pain begging to feel like Larry again, wondering if it’s not adrenaline as much as repair, the speed at which I seem to be healing, but I’m ready, or feel ready, to take on near-full of domestic tasks, if not only five percent of athletic ones.

Emboldened perhaps by the Indian elder, B’s magic stretch-tape, but – in full disclosure – the fact that by virtue of my 3:33:08 marathon in Steamtown 10-10-10, I am still eligible to reapply for Boston 2012, and the entry requirements have changed, I’m almost 12 minutes below my age group, Qualifying Time of 3:45 (It changes to 3:40 for Boston 2013), which means I’m to reapply on Sept. 14, 2011, which if I’m realistic will be a sensible date to slowly bring myself back up to the strength and hopefully even greater flexibility than I was before the March 28 injury (when I discussed the possibility of running in Boston next year, Dr. K, my primary care physician, said given my “perseverance” that she didn’t think there was any reason not to resume training for Boston in the fall; I told her that I’d imagine my wife M would have an entirely different adjective in mind .¤.¤. ), and set my sights on the finish line in Boston, not with any personal records in mind, but if they come for this new body then fine, but they are not uppermost in my mind. If the body calls out for rest, I will rest. Athletes far more accomplished than me have set themselves smart, sensible goals. Finally, I’d like to think, and please tell me in your comments if you sense I’m straying, I’m back to basics, where I started in the early days of this blog: Running, Reading and Writing. Racing doesn’t apply.

Next: Running for Your Life: Discovery of Stillness