It's All Connected

I write this with an icepack wrapped around my right knee. But I don’t remember ever hurting it. I didn’t twist it, I didn’t hyper-extend it, I didn’t land on it. I have just been running. So when the doctor asked what I did to it, I had nothing to say except that I have been running and one day it hurt.

She gave me a look that suggested she didn’t believe me and asked me to describe the three runs prior to noticing the pain. Nothing remarkable, I said. I nice long trail run, an easy afternoon of loops near home, and tempo run the morning I first noticed the pain and swelling.

She gave me that look again. She figured I was holding something back.

Then she started testing things. Twist, turn, bend, etc. Stand on one foot and do a squat.

She gave me the look again and started manipulating my ankles. No problems. My ankles don’t hurt.

“Are you sure you didn’t twist or roll your ankle recently?”

Well come to think of it, I sure did. On that long trail run. But it’s my knee that hurts.

“And you did it early in the run?”

Well, yeah. About halfway.

Her look changed. Now she was a disappointed teacher who clearly thought I understood anatomy better than I do.

Without resorting to a chart or singing that song about the bones all being connected, she treated me like the mental toddler that I can be and explained that in rolling my ankle early in the run, I transferred the stress to my knee, and likely favored my ankle for the rest of the run.

“Did your hip hurt after that run? Your lower back?”

Well…yeah.

“Your knee will be fine. You need to strengthen your ankle and your core. Call me in two weeks.”

This is a mistake I’m sure a lot of runners make. We get very strong and fit in one direction, with one set of muscles, often neglecting the rest of the body. So once I’m done icing this knee, I’m going to go to the gym instead of hitting the trails.

I hate the gym. I love the trails. You can see how I get myself into these situations.

Who Are You Kidding?

By now both of my regular readers know of vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s less than accurate assessment of his marathon performance. Real Running doesn’t want to be political, so I will leave Mr. Ryan’s case aside here. Sort of.

This came up with a colleague of mine a few years ago after the Seattle Marathon. He was skeptical of a friend’s claim of a 3:15:00 finish time and did a little digging. In pictures late on the course, his friend looked remarkably fresh compared the runners around him. And there was no finishing photo of him. I suggested he look at the split times or the finish times of the runners around him in the pictures. My colleague ultimately didn’t care whether or not his friend had cheated, but wondered aloud: why on earth one would fabricate a finish time in a marathon?

Dude, you’re the psych professor, you tell me.

All I can come up with on this front is that for so many people marathon training is a terribly public endeavor. Especially when training for our first 26.2, we employ family and friends. They support us, talk to us about running, and wish us luck on race day. So to fail would feel like you are letting others down. Otherwise what would be the point? Unless you are simply a pathological liar…which I suppose is always a possibility.

There is also another level to this. If you haven’t yet read the story of Kip Litton and his graduate-level marathon cheating, you should. I will link to it on my Twitter feed for both of you. Spoiler alert: When you fabricate an entire event, including fake runners, so you can claim a fast time, you might have a problem. See also: Donald Crowhurst. Seriously. Look him up.

In summary, there is no good reason to lie about a marathon time. Which leaves very few ways to explain why one would do so. Worse, it is a little disturbing that one would try to get away with such a fabrication in the technology-saturated running world we live in.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @GregVanBelle, where I won’t lie to you about my training runs, injury status, race plans, and various other topics.