Well, time to swallow my pride.

Two nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with spasms and pain in my left knee. On the side of the knee, on my illiotibial band. The spot I injured in my last race, forever ago.

I’ve been nursing it back to health, giving it everything I thought it needed to get better. Rest, strengthening, massages, stretching, more rest. Seven months of care and it’s still not healed. I’m up to 8-mile long runs, but those end with a wobbly, tired left leg.

I’m a little frustrated.

So the other night, as I lay in the dark, massaging the leg in question, I decided it was time to seek medical help. It’s time to be a runner again.

The Ragnar Relay is almost upon us, and I am… apprehensive.

Less than two weeks after the Trails4Tails ultra, I’m embarking on another adventure. Don’t get me wrong– I’m all for adventures. I just need longer to recover afterward.

Of particular concern is my IT band. The last time I tried running on it, it was painful and stiff after 3 miles– well short of the 5-9 mile legs I’ll be doing as part of my relay team.

But I’m not hopeless. My last run was three days ago. Six days ago I couldn’t walk without a limp, let alone run. If I’ve been healing at the same rate over these last three days, running my legs should be feasible.

Right? Perhaps borderline-feasible?

The heavy snow has driven runners inside to their old frienemy, the treadmill. Feel lukewarm about it or hate it, the treadmill provides a very different workout, and not just because it’s so dull. I’ve had several safety questions about treadmills, so I thought it deserved address here. I tried to swallow my prejudice against the ever-churning engine of monotony, at least long enough to get some objective research done on its relation to running injuries (for it has been known to produce non-running injuries).

It turns out treadmills won’t injure you more frequently… they just injure you differently.

There are some problems related to the repetitive motion of treadmills. Most of these relate to your form. We all know that bad form can injure you, but it’s much more likely to do so on a treadmill. On the roads, you’re forced to change the way your body moves to adapt to the terrain; this means that your body gets a break from the excess wear and tear caused by running with bad form. The treadmill, however, gives us no breaks. Most people use the same repetitive motion, and so flaws in their form go uncorrected. So if you find yourself sore after a couple runs on the treadmill, it’s probably your own fault; our hated machine just exacerbates the problem.

The biggest risk with treadmill running also stems from its homogeneity. Running on such a uniform surface trains your legs to move in one particular way. So what happens when you return to outdoor running? Suddenly you’re a domesticated tiger forced to survive in the wild. You might make it, but chances are you won’t last long. The uneven surfaces demand too much of muscles which were never used on the ‘mill, and suddenly, strains and pulls abound. or, as they say at runningplanet.com:

When running outside you encounter uneven surfaces, stones, soft areas, hard areas, dry areas, wet areas and various combinations of these surfaces. The challenge of running over these surfaces improves your propreoception or the ability of your neuromuscular system to correct for the effect these types of surfaces have on your muscles and the position of your body parts and joints. This is critical to runners because it affects balance, power and running economy. Running on the treadmill removes this very important part of training.
-Treadmill Running Pros and Cons

Another study seems to show that long-term milling actually keeps your bones from becoming resistant to the hard outdoor concrete (check this out).

It would be unfair, however, to exclude the benefits of treadmill running. You’re of course off the ice, which means fewer falls, less danger from cars, silly stuff like that. More interestingly, treadmills seem to help prevent the usual overuse injuries (shin splints, stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, and so forth). According to several sources, these injuries come from stress on the connective tissue, the result of running on hard surfaces. Getting off the concrete can help stave off such issues.

But, as we’ve learned, treadmills shouldn’t be used as a replacement for outside running- at least, not if you intend to return to it. Over reliance on it leads to injury. Intermittent use, however, provides runners with valuable protection and rest. So it does (as much as I hate to admit it) play a role in a healthy training regiment… just don’t let that role get too big.

For the past five weeks, I’ve been working at a day camp for kids. Part of my job calls for councilor meetings every Friday, where we play games and conference/complain about the week we’ve had.

At yesterday’s meeting, we were playing a game that should be familiar to most readers, called Run the Bases. The game is simple enough; basically, two people throw a ball to each other over a particular stretch of land. An unsuitable large number of their friends (in this case about thirty councilors) try to run between them. Either of the ball passers may decide, at any moment, that they would rather hurl the ball at a friend– at which point said friend gets beaned. It’s a game that provided me hours of entertainment as a child.

Running being one of my few skills, I decided that I was invincible. At one point, I found myself making a close turn around one of these ball catchers just as he caught the ball. Determined not to get hit, I took off at a dead sprint. My eyes, however, were still locked on his hateful hand, clenched around the tennis ball. I turned my head forward just in time to see the horror on a fellow councilor’s face as he hurtled at me.

We had the cartoonish kind of collision with our chests together and our arms held out behind each other. In the moments before we hit the grass, it must have looked like we were about to hug.

And now, the relevance of this story: I must have turned my knee outward right before the collision, because my fellow councilor/ball-dodger managed to hit the side of it just right with his own. Both of my knees were pretty banged up after the ultra, and even after two weeks of healing, this hit was enough to renew some of that damage.

It’s certainly not catastrophic, and it came at a time when I don’t have to run lots of miles. In fact, I could only laugh about it afterward. After running 50 miles on asphalt, this is how I get hurt.

Behold the walnut.

Smaller than my fist and colored an unassuming green. An agent of my destruction.

The trees of Bethlehem, overburdened with such fruit, have been dropping them to the earth. Some land in the street where they blacken into pulpy dreck. Others roll through the grass, as if finding the perfect place from which to strike.

On last Thursday’s run, I stepped on a walnut of the latter kind. Or, I should say, black walnut; my research revealed an apt name for such a shrouded ambusher. I ended up stumbling in such a way that made me tweak my groin. Tweak, not pull. I think.

It’s been a problem during practice the last few days, especially on hillier routes. Which will be fine if it just allows me a good race at Lehigh this weekend. Paul Short, after all, may be my last chance to PR in the 8k.