<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2024-04-21</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # Running Injuries Suck Balls  I was going back into some of my journal entries, looking for references to my knee injury. I noticed a running theme (no pun intended): Over the entire 5-6 months, I was expecting to begin running again within a few of weeks. It's funny, but I think it was only this naive optimism that kept me going. Back in November, I had a fall right at the end of one of my runs. There is a park nearby where I live with a paved trail connecting multiple parks alongside a river. It's a great place to run, and the river is home to many native birds, including Canada geese. The geese can be somewhat of a nuisance, however, as they leave large droppings everywhere. The entire trail is about 12 km. From the park where I start, I can run 8 km in one direction to reach the end of the trail, and then run back. I had made this a 3 times per week habit since the summer. That evening in November, just when I had finished, I slipped on some wet leaves. The trail was covered in them, and I'm sure they were hiding plenty of the aforementioned goose droppings. When I landed on my forefoot, my right leg slipped straight out to the side, and I heard a popping noise as I came down upon my knee. The next morning I was having difficulty walking. My knee had completely stiffened, and I knew something was wrong. I went to emerg. This is where I'm just going to "yadda yadda yadda" past some details, but I was told then that I would need to heal for 4 to 6 weeks, and I should follow up with my family doctor. I'm in Canada, and here there is a shortage of doctors. I'm lucky to even have a regular family doctor; many people don't. Most are overworked and not taking on any new patients. So the soonest I could make an appointment was in a month. This was actually okay with me, as I figured "well, that will be 4 weeks and I'm sure I'll be fine by then. She'll just tell me that everything's good and I can start running again." So while I didn't like taking four weeks off from running, I kept a very strict regimen in the gym, keeping up with strength training, and using a stationary bike and elliptical for cardio. The entire time I was just reminding myself that I needed to keep doing this so that I could keep up my fitness for a strong return to running. In a month, this would all just be a memory. The following is from a journal entry I wrote on Nov 24, 2023: >[!quote] >*"3 days until the doctor! I can't wait to start running again next week! It will be hard to take it slow. I need to keep it to the treadmill until the weekend I think. But next weekend i'm gonna run 10 k outside. Even if it's raining."* I saw the doctor, and of course, she did *not* give me the okay to start running. Instead she referred me to a clinic that specialises in sports injuries. It was there that I learned I had a minor tear in my ACL, and I would need to start physiotherapy immediately. Nobody could give me specific answers about timeframes. The most I could get was by asking if it was *possible* that I'd be running again in another 4 weeks? Have you seen anyone come back from a similar injury in that amount of time? I was told yes, it has happened, and I determined that I would be one of those people. And so I looked forward to that four weeks being up so that I could start running again. Time after time, there were dates where I expected I could begin running again, and looked forward to. I made sure to get my hours of cardio in 3 days per week, so as to minimise the the time I would need to return to my previous fitness level. And time after time I was disappointed. But because I was continually looking to a date that was relatively soon, I kept up with the gym cardio workouts with my regular resistance training. If I knew back in early November that it would be 5 months before I could even *start* running again, I'm not sure that my enthusiasm for fitness would have survived. I just haven't made it enough of a habit yet. And I'm only yet at 13 km and a lot slower than I was. I've still a ways to go. This might be a good place to get into my fitness history, if you could even call it that. It's far more interesting than my injury to be honest. But that will be for another day.