Fraser Darcy

We may not be cooked after all.

At one point this week I thought I was overcooked to the point it would be two months until I would be back running normally again.

At another point I thought I was on track to break my 10k PB in two weeks.

At the final point of this week I was somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

I finished off last week leaving regular readers on the cliffhanger of whether I would jog my normal Tuesday session or give it a crack. My hip was still giving me grief but having ambled my way through an easy 60 minutes on Monday (after 2hrs on Sunday) I was still optimistic it was improving. I was even so optimistic I went for an easy afternoon run on the trails. If I can do that, I should be able to session properly. I did the exact same thing last week.

So once again, for the second week in a row, I jumped on the bike at 6:30 for the RAO session, loosened my stiff hip up afterwards and then rolled out in the warm up at 9:30 with Connor, Izzi and Adam. I didn’t know how much I would do but I wanted to try at least the first rep and see how my hip felt at speed. It felt just as sore as it did this time last week and I managed 5*Mile then. My aim, in a perfect world, was to run them all around 3:00/km pace or just slower. Do that, and I thought running a PB in Melbourne would be doable.

So of course, I started the first rep after all that. Me and Adam were out in front and straight away Adam said ‘you’re limping’. Yes I was but I was still running as fast as I wanted. In hindsight I probably should’ve stopped then. But as we learnt last week it can sometimes be too late to ask for forgiveness and this time it was. By the end of the first rep I was breathing a bit harder than I wanted but we ran it in 3:00/km pace. A few seconds faster than we planned but oh well. The same thing happened again on the second rep but I was breathing harder again. The hip wasn’t bothering me mid-rep, besides the fact I felt like I couldn’t run my natural stride.

On the third rep I was well and truly out the back door in no-man’s land as Adam ran it a bit faster. Connor was next in the train and I worked on trying to stay with him. That became the plan for the fourth rep and he dropped me in the final few hundred metres. I was going backwards across the whole session which is not good for confidence. In the final rep I tried to hold off Izzi and was able to do so thankfully. She ran her fastest rep of the session while I ran my slowest. It was still around 3:00/km pace and I also got to dip into the hurt locker a bit which I hadn’t done in a session for a while so it was 80% positive. The other 20% was the fact I regressed over the session and my hip wasn’t 100%. Still, I jogged the warm down, made it back to The RunHouse and had ticked off another session. This was the third week since the Sydney Marathon and at this point after Adelaide I had also just completed a great 3:00/km average session (6*1 km reps) so the argument was there that I was in the same shape pre-Sydney, if not better as the reps are longer.

However, I’ve written on these pages before it’s not wise to compare times between individual training sessions so disregard all of that. What is instead important to focus on is that my hip felt very sore afterwards and even sorer in my attempted afternoon run later that day. The theory I was working towards whilst running in pain was that it was just a tendon issue and I needed to keep getting the work in while my tendon adapted to the load. The pain of quitting was not as bad as the pain incurred whilst running.

Until I tried to run on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, warm, sunny, no wind, perfect for running in Belair. I tried to go out for an easy hour but only managed 2km’s before realising it felt terrible. I couldn’t run and was hobbling around hoping for my hip to warm up. The pain of running outweighed the pain of quitting. It’s crazy to think that my idea of a ‘good time’ on a beautiful day was trying to run for an hour in 6/10 pain. Why don’t I go do something else with my day? Sit outside and read a book? Relax? Soak up the sunshine? Because I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to be a better runner. The answer to that question on Wednesday though was not ‘run’ but instead ‘stop and relax’.

A little dejected after my failed run I returned home, tried to have a nap and ‘restart’ my day but it didn’t really work. The other big highlight of my day was visiting Emma to get some physio treatment. Maybe if Emma can release a few things I might be able to run an hour later on in the day and still reach 120km’s for the week?

Emma of course did her best at treating me, massaging affected areas, asking a few questions and doing a few tests to make sure she was still right in thinking it was a muscle/tendon issue in my glute and possibly groin. Two tests in particular I was failing at were the hop test (I couldn’t hop at all on my affected leg) and hip abduction on my affected leg. I had no ability to push against Emma’s hand and the pain in trying to do so was 8/10 pain. Not good. While doing all these tests though one thing Emma couldn’t rule out was possible bone stress in the neck of my femur. I knew, given my description of the pain being ‘in my leg’ and my inability to hop, that I was ticking a few boxes for bone stress but I also just didn’t feel like it was bone stress. But again, I’m not a physio and nor do I have a good track record at managing my injuries successfully (this was now the 3rd week dealing with this). With nothing to rule out bone stress as a possible cause the fear of that as a possible diagnosis was frightening for not only me but also Emma.

Emma of course doesn’t want to see her little brother injured but also doesn’t want to give the wrong diagnosis as a physio expert. I didn’t want the news that I have possible bone stress because that generally requires 6 weeks of no-running followed by 6 weeks of run-walk training. Plus, the location of the possible bone stress was in one of the worst places to get it for a runner. In the space of 3 weeks I’d gone from being at the top of my game at Sydney Marathon to the very bottom. Potentially. This was all speculation from Emma and myself without a second opinion or that of an MRI machine. I still had to drive home that afternoon from SPARC thinking that I might possibly be injured for a long time. There goes my 10km ambitions. What will I do with all my free time?

It meant on Thursday I was pretty flat. I was glad I didn’t have to force myself to go for a run but it didn’t mean I was miraculously able to walk without pain. Getting around the house and off the couch was still a pretty frustrating task and the pain of doing so each time was a reminder that I was possibly severely injured. Of course, when you have an injury as a runner you start to question all the reasons where you went wrong or look for all the reasons you might not actually be severely injured. Such reasons for me were:

• Running two marathons in close proximity followed by hard training straight afterwards is a big risk factor in injury.
• Not resting enough after the marathon even though I knew I was sore was another misstep.
• However, I was training 180km’s a week and racing regularly through July and I didn’t get injured then so why, after 100-130km’s a week and two big races am I suddenly injured?
• I eat plenty, sleep a lot, do a lot of stretching and resting, I’m not a typical injured and depleted runner, how could I get bone stress?
• It doesn’t ache at night, I can’t press on any sore bone, I passed a few other tests of Emma’s, it might not be bone stress.

I’m doing all this thinking with my time that I would usually spend running. Not that it got me anywhere. Or was healing me any quicker. The worst part of Thursday was I went in to The RunHouse to see Izzi and Riley about a few things and told them I might possibly have a bad injury. Izzi was pretty sad for me whilst Riley probably was too but was more clinical in his response due to his physio background. Two marathons is a massive load and if you can’t put on your pants without pain then that’s probably bone stress was his general idea. Coming from someone who is a physio and had multiple bone stress injuries it was some advice I had to agree even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

The realisation that I was going to spend more time on the bike in the next few weeks started to sink in a bit on Friday morning at the RAO session. I rode around pain free for over an hour and a half before spending the rest of the morning doing not a whole lot at The RunHouse. To be honest, not being able to run meant that I was happy to waste some time in my day because I knew that I didn’t have to find time to get out for an afternoon run later in the day. Perhaps an injury lay-off would be a good mental refresher. Perhaps this injury is just a reminder that one week of jogging post marathon isn’t enough both physically and mentally. Food for thought and something I will experiment with next time no matter how good I feel I think.

I didn’t waste my whole day on Friday at The RunHouse though. I went in to SPARC at 12pm to get another opinion on my injury from Dr.Verrall who runs the practice and, according to Emma, is an ‘expert in groins’. Dr. Verrall fit me in, without an appointment, did the same tests that Emma did with my leg and then pretty succinctly told me he didn’t think it was bone stress. Really? ‘Yeah, probably not, I’ve been wrong before but I’m happy to take a punt on this one and say it’s not bone stress. That’s probably pretty good news for your weekend. Still get a scan to be sure though’. That was great news to be honest but even then, without a definitive YOU DO NOT HAVE BONE STRESS I wasn’t able to fully relax into the realisation I might not actually be seriously injured. For all intents and purposes I still couldn’t bloody walk pain free so I was still injured, just not worst case scenario. Besides the good news and a referral for an MRI, Dr.Verrall did give me a script for some anti-inflammatories as well which was much appreciated.

The rest of my Friday was spent doing some stretching, life admin work and an attempted pick-up of a leg press machine. I wasn’t walking around pain free with a big smile thinking I could be jogging by the weekend but I also wasn’t as down in the dumps as I was on Thursday. I needed more rest both physically and mentally before I could work out what it meant for my running ambitions.

On Saturday, after a pretty good sleep, I woke up feeling the best I’ve felt in my hip since before the Sydney Marathon. In fact, I felt better than I did six days ago before I ran 2hrs on my sore hip. I didn’t get greedy though and still jumped on the bike at the RAO Trail session and had a great time in the rain trying to cheer on the runners that joined us out there.

The great time continued on with a visit to the Marion Aquatic Centre not just for a sauna, but for a gym session too. Dylan let me in with Emma’s reactivated pass (no issues at the gate this time) and for over an hour I did some elliptical (strange machine, should’ve watched an information video on how to use it), leg press, hip abduction, calf raises, deadlifts, squats and stretching. And it felt bloody amazing! I was walking pain free!! Maybe I don’t have a stress fracture after all!! Even though Emma was never sure it was bone stress and Dr. Verrall was pretty certain it wasn’t the biggest indicator I might not be seriously injured was always going to be how I interpreted my own pain and sensation. Now with it mostly pain free and not inhibiting my walking anymore there might just be might in the tunnel.

So much so, that after my sauna on Saturday I went out for a run!

NO I DID NOT! I instead learnt from my mistakes through February and March this year when I tried to take two days off, run a few days, take some more days off, run, repeat for six weeks until I was back running again. This time I promised myself I wouldn’t run at all across the weekend and would hopefully take one chunk of time off (maybe 7 days, who knows) and then once I get back into it I’m good to go.

Around that time frame of getting back into it is of course the MRI scan I still need to go and do on Wednesday to confirm what my body/brain, Dr. Verrall and Emma all think that I don’t in fact have bone stress and instead have just tweaked some muscles/tendons in my hip. If that’s all good and I can get back running I can work out what I want to do at Melbourne next weekend. It’s still an event worth travelling over even if I wasn’t racing considering RAO’s involvement and the fact I’m only going to be spending money on fuel and food (thanks to accomodation offered by family friends). On one hand being involved as a runner is a lot better than being involved as a spectator but not being able to give it 100% is also difficult.

But before we get too deep into working out what I’m doing next weekend I still have to finish off what I did this weekend. On Saturday afternoon I went out for another spin on the bike as I had energy to burn. I rode up Queen’s Jubilee in Belair to get my cardiovascular system pumping and everything felt pretty good. I even played some music like I was doing a normal training run which felt great. My hip pulled up pretty fine afterwards too.

On Sunday I continued the bike riding extravanganza of this week into a RAO long run – bike edition. I didn’t really know what my plan was but rolled out with the group for the first part, got some socialising in and then noticed how empty the roads around the Uni loop. I thought about a quick hot lap, hesitated and then went for it. Again, good to get the cardiovascualr system pumping. Hot lap done I went to rejoin the group only to get sidetracked by a road I’d never been on before. May as well see where it goes. Oh it goes there, of course. I was now in front of Adelaide Oval. Another hot lap? Why not? Hot lap number two done I was ready to start chasing the front group down and hoped to catch them before they turned around. I ended up timing it perfectly and spent the rest of the ride sort ambling around them. It was a pretty fun way to spend a long run, cruising the River Torrens, seeing other RAO runners on their long runs etc. The best part was I had made it through the weekend doing exercise just on the bike without running and without going crazy.

Having had a few days off in a row to think about my running whilst on the bike I think I would like to get back into running with the intention of remaining pain free for as long as possible and working back into regular training and NOT OVERDOING THE RACING. That’s the element of my running that carries the highest risk factor when it comes to injury and after this potential scare it’s not a risk I want to take immediately again.

Can I get back into running soon enough to still compete in a race in October or November? Who knows. Similar to how I finished off last week, the unpredictability and excitement in not really knowing what the next week* holds for me is hopefully leaving you on the same cliff that I’m on. As long as next week doesn’t involve a bone stress scare then whatever happens is all good with me… thanks for reading!