Pain, Pandemic, and Pace: A Letter to the Fellow Injured

 

Dear Injured,

You have been asked these questions before. What would you do if, during the early peaks of the Corona Virus pandemic, you fell off your bicycle face down and broke numerous bones in your body, received several stitches, and tore the two mandibular discs in your jaw? What would you say if, despite all the blood that painted the pavement, you woke up in the hospital surrounded by a professional team of doctors and nurses, all unmasked? How would you feel over the following year with the associated follow-up hospital visits, procedures, recommended surgeries? Exhausted? Wouldn't it be easy to stay home and pop those refillable potent opioid painkillers? Would any amount of robust IP beer help alleviate the bruised emotions?

What if you were an ultramarathon runner who took bicycling as a cross-sport halfheartedly? What if you were not even riding your racing bicycle at the time of that accident and just an older slow mountain bike to cruise in the neighborhood with your pandemically bored son, who was not attending his school in person? What if you fell because you tried to avoid a group of neighbors with no masks on blocking the street? Is it not ironic because you spent the rest of the year visiting radiology centers and clinics?

Dear fellow injured, all that happened to me on April 5, 2020. I regained my consciousness in the hospital, thinking of the whereabouts of my son. A doctor assured me that he returned home safely. Then I asked about my GPS watch to make sure it was stopped. A nurse said it is in my shoes by the bed. I felt drugged and closed my eyes again.

Dear injured, you and I can imagine that such an injury for an elite runner right before a significant event could have life-changing outcomes. To go on with my average running life, I needed recovery, and I needed additional inspiration to begin healing. For a month, I was nearly static, taking pills, often sipping my food through a straw, which was still painful on the infected tongue, and listening to the noises of crepitus, tinnitus, clicking, and popping all too close to my brain. You and I know that these symptoms would remain for a long time, but do they mean we have to surrender?

Then after a little more than a month of confinement and stationary life, there came a message from other runners announcing a plan for a 5.5-mile run for May 8 to honor the fallen A. M. Arbery, who had recently been fatally shot while jogging in Georgia. How can you join a group run not knowing if you are still functional? Able to commemorate? How can you disappoint your running friends? You would be tasked with proving to all that it was not the end of you. I did what you would do.

On May 8, I led throughout the run, led strong, and this marked the beginning of yet another comeback from yet another brutal injury, this time later in life. From that moment, there would be no need for any IP, packs of pills, or impediments of the mind. To prove it to running saints, soon, for the first time, I was even on the top row of our running club leaderboard, in all three categories, distance, time, and elevation gain (I detest conspiracy theories, but could those incredible runners who are always on the top have allowed me to feel relevant?). I won the Grand Prix in my age group (this race series uses a point system to tally results for all active SAR Members). Yet to hear myself breathe further, I ran my seventh edition of The Loop (that terrific fifty-four miles fencing the four washes of Tucson and above all, not alone this time but with fabulous running friends. Pounding, pounding, breath, breath, and a time nearly a PR. Thus, dear Injured, I write to you with sympathy to remind you that a broken wrist, damaged ankle cartilage, torn mandibular discs added to other chronic injuries, back and forehead, injury upon injury, should not stop a runner. Running helps heal these. Find a way. Change the form. Create new technics and tactics. Use devices. Yes, I agree; we do not give up easily.