I’ve broken down… in more ways than one.
Unable to self-treat with much success, I’ve gone and gotten a Physical Therapist/Sports Medicine/Chiropractor person. It took some time finding somebody who had an immediate opening… and it’s far from cheap. But at least the Yelp reviews are mostly positive… and it’s not like those can be faked, right?
I’ve never handled criticism well, even as a young child in school. I’ve also never really learned how to take a compliment but this ramble isn’t about compliments. Maybe I’m terrible with criticism due to lingering Catholic guilt syndrome, that sense that the criticisms are an indictment and indicative of far greater failings. Maybe it’s because the criticism means I’m personally not measuring up to what I is expected or desirable. I tend to bristle at notions of “this is the only right way…” or “this is what you must do….” That’s in all facets of my life — I never got married, never had kids, I work a schedule that doesn’t fit within the 9-5 mindset, I inverted the pyramid of career whereby I maxed out early and took a turn to lesser responsibilities as I got older. It isn’t that I’m marching to my own drummer, it’s that I tend to listen with headphones whilst running… or not at all when I’m racing.
So I immediately take issue with criticism because I have in the back of my head the thoughts of, “sure, sure… I get that that’s ONE way to do it… there are others, ya know?” and “I understand best practices and the belief that this is the optimum way to do things… but a lot of best practices evolve over time… hell, in the 1920s runners were told NOT to drink water and to down whiskey during long races… and women were told they couldn’t vote… or that they couldn’t physically run a marathon… or…” I’m narrowing in on physical activity criticism and yet conflating grander pervasive and general notions of criticism. I lack focus, a criticism that has often rightly been hurled at me.
So I once again digress from a meandering soapbox tirade and circle back to the criticism of the PT/sports medicine/chiropractor person I found on Yelp. After a 44 minute assessment on Wednesday, the doctor had me figured out. My hips were out of alignment, the majority of my spine was “locked up” and the top four vertebrae were doing the majority of the work, my right leg was shorter than my left and the left was overcompensating and that’s why it hurt so much… A lot of that makes sense, sure, I guess. But it was when I told him how much I run and he replied “oh, and you overpronate so much that it’s a wonder you haven’t had more injuries.” According to him, since running is a jarring motion and since I’ve done so much of it I should, I don’t know, be in even worse pain? Is that a compliment? A criticism? It all made me feel like I was running all wrong, like I was wrong on so many levels.
Since then I’ve had one 40 minute therapy session (running tally: $183 for 84 minutes of treatment). There were hot lasers, a stainless steel instrument run through muscle groups to loosen/break up problems, some chiropractic pokes and prods and adjustments. He tells me this will help… and that since I came in when I did it was early enough that it hopefully would be a fairly short-term treatment process to getting me back onto the road. I wasn’t able to pin down what “fairly short-term” meant to him, hoping to clearly set our shared definitions, but I do know I’m not supposed to run this weekend. I have another session on Monday morning so we’ll see what he says then. Due to my travel schedule, it’s the last time I’ll be able to see him for two months so fingers crossed “short-term” means “Monday.”
Again, he discussed the over-pronation and issues I’m having. He gave me some stretches, which I tried to remember and am trying to do three times a day. But here’s the thing — I have no idea if I’m doing them correctly. I *think* I’m doing what he told me to do. I *think* it’s stretching what it’s supposed to. But I *know* I’m in this mess because apparently I don’t move correctly according to him. So what if I’m *still* not moving correctly in these stretches? Will I only make things worse?
And another thing — as bad as my form may be according to other people, it’s kinda worked out okay for me. Yeah, I’m injured right now and I deon’t know how or why it came about. I’ve joking said it was from picking up a sock but I can’t pinpoint the moment that delineates BP and AP (“before pain” and “after pain”). I didn’t trip and fall. I didn’t hoist a giant cinder block onto my shoulder for kicks. It just… happened. Maybe it’s because I’m 40-something now and things are just breaking down. But leading up to this moment, I trimmed my running times from the high 4s and occasional 5s to the low 3 hours. I’ve logged over a million meters in races. I’ve run the 50 states three times. I’ve run the 7 continents and all the Hope/Crosby/Lamour “Road to…” movie titles. I’ve done okay with my form.
Maybe changing my running form will improve things… but to do so it requires breaking down what I know and understand, what has worked for me, and rebuilding, relearning. I’m a firm believer in knowledge and education. But I have always had trouble making the one-step back, two steps forward hop-scotch. But from micro to macro. In order for that 1:2 ratio to work, you do have to go backwards and I’m terrible at that. I don’t have the patience for it. I have long rationalized this as being by the time I did go backwards and forwards to rebuild and make progress, my supposed “wrong-way” methodology would already have me far ahead of that point. Yes, yes… the “improved” style may eventually make up the distance over time… but by then, maybe it will be too late to matter. It isn’t that I can’t accept that I’m wrong… it’s that I can’t accept the opportunity cost in time and space to go back when I could always be moving forward.
And it is because of that personal shortcoming and failing that has led me to avoid criticisms and to abandon anything that wasn’t going right instead of trying to fix or resolve things. Why spend time on that when I can just go do something new and different? It is the difference between maximizing an aspect of self and maximizing the amount of self — quality over quantity. And I have in my own selfish way chosen quantity.
In the end, I’m trying to do the “dead bugs” stretch I was told. I’m sitting in a door frame stretching a leg… turning it to the right? To the left? Why didn’t I write this down? Why didn’t the doc give me a worksheet or a link to a youtube video I could watch to try and match my movements? I would put it on a comment card but since he doesn’t have one of those I can only assume he’s as non-receptive to criticism as I am.
What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force? All I know is that my back is bruised from being poked, prodded, lasered, and adjusted. The doctor warned me it might get worse before it gets better.
“Yeah,” I said.
I didn’t say, “I know how this works.”
***
Post-Script: This blog post, like 93.897% of my posts could use a second draft. But that would require taking a critical look at it and breaking it down and rebuilding what didn’t work… and this blog post is also why 93.897% of the time, I don’t do the rewrites, even though I know I should. It’s also one of many reasons I never sold my stoner comedy script, Two Guys and Bach.