Messages from the Pale Blue Dot

Discipline v. Compulsion

After three months of trying to run through this devilish pain in my heel, I finally realized two weeks ago that I had slipped over to the dark side of that fine line between discipline and compulsion. Running had become, one step at a time, less about training and more about pain management. So, when I was about ninety minutes into a perfectly lovely two hour run in Buenos Aires and every step on my right foot stole pleasure from what should have been an enjoyable workout in the Reserva Ecologica Costañera Sul, I realized that putting up with this much pain was really compulsive and unhealthy.

So, last week, I went to see Dr. Michael Schumacher, the podiatrist who treated me for plantar fasciitis in 2006. When I had seen him for this injury two months ago, he had simply told me to continue doing what I had done two years before.. use a Strassburg sock to hold the plantar fascia extended during the night, take anti-inflammatory drugs, ice the region several times a day and do my stretches.

However, this year, unlike in 2006, my right heel pain didn’t get any better. I even stopped running for three weeks while we were in Upstate New York and I was in Ghana. Three weeks is a long time to take off from training, particularly only a few months before a major marathon. But, when I ran the Human Race 10K in São Paulo on 31 August, the pain was so bad afterwards that I had trouble walking through the airport the next morning. Obviously, something was wrong and maybe, if the treatment for plantar fasciitis wasn’t working, it might not be what we had thought it was.

Last week, Schumacher said that perhaps this time it was not plantar fasciitis but a stress fracture in the heel and he is trying to convince my insurance company that I need an MRI to make sure.

But, one way or another, running is no fun and there is no way that I would either be able to put in the necessary 30 km runs this month to prepare for the NY Marathon, or be able to run the whole distance without suffering (more than the usual suffering) from Staten Island to the finish 42 km later in Manhattan.

So, today, I logged into the ING NY Marathon official site to cancel:

Are you sure you want to cancel your entry to the marathon?

Yes, I am sure. (click)

You have cancelled your entry in the 2008 ING New York City Marathon. You will receive a guaranteed spot in next year's Marathon provided you register and pay all applicable fees.

So, the running season is over, which leaves cycling for the next few months during the cooling days of autumn. I’m out a few dollars for the entry fee, but feel a sense of relief that I won’t have to gut it out both training and racing through the pain. I’m also really glad that cycling is a much more sensible cardiovascular workout for the aging body, 

So, much for the concept of intelligent design! Any engineer specializing in ergonomics would never have combined the food and air intake tubes; would have calculated the stress on the L4-5 and S1 vertebrae from upright walking and designed it much differently; would certainly not have combined the recreational and discharge areas… and would never have built the human heel with the plantar fascia and Achilles tendon connections so poorly supported! We are just the product of a non-teleological process that is comprised of the survivals by our ancestors who limped through life just long enough to produce spawn.

Three NY State Park Ride

Well, I’m back in New York but much further downstate, cycling today, mid-week, up along the Hudson River through three of the state’s most beautiful parks, Harriman, Bear Mountain and Fahnestock.

It was a bit more than three weeks ago that we packed up the car and left the Finger Lakes. Pam and the boys dropped me off at Newark Airport and I spent the next two weeks traveling through Frankfurt to Accra, Ghana for the climate change negotiations and then through Johannesburg to South America. After a brief weekend in São Paulo to run in the Human Race 10K, I spent the rest of that week in Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires.

On arriving back in New York, I got in some loops of Central Park that knocked me for a loop. Maybe too fast and too furious after two weeks on four continents. The jet lag wasn’t too bad, but the stress of being on the road and away from home for a total of four weeks, plus several all night flights, lots of airports, too much hotel and airplane food and maybe a few too many bottles of good Finger Lakes, Chilean and Argentine wines.. well, I was exhausted. Being just enough run down and then spinning around Central Park at top speed left the immunological door open for something I’d acquired flying from Buenos Aires to Washington… and on Monday, after yoga, I knew I was coming down with something. Isn’t it funny that when your body needs a break and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, eventually your immune system says, “Well, if you aren’t going to slow down on your own, I’m going to do it for you.” After seeing the podiatrist about my very uncooperative plantar fascia (more on this later) I rode my bike home, got into bed and didn’t emerge until Thursday night. But, if there is one thing that I have learned over the years, pushing through a bad cold only prolongs the agony.. So, I was good and just got into bed and stayed there, resisting even the temptation to migrate to the home office two bedrooms away for a little work.  

 

 

On Saturday, suffering now from a case of cabin fever, I decided to take a slow, easy nice weekend ride from North White Plains, up through Dutchess County and back to Croton Falls, riding from one MetroNorth train station to another. No pushing, just fun and slow. As you can see from the elevation profile, it was either up or down for 70 km. Surprisingly, by the end of the ride I think that the mild exertion (OK, for some people three hours on a bike is not “mild exertion”) actually help clear out the remnants of the cold and I was feeling strong and recovered by the end of the ride.

 

Today’s ride was an escape from the pressures of planning for a series of reports we’ll publish next week during the start of the UN General Assembly here in New York. The week has been a series of frustrations in dealing with UN Security, a number of less than helpful bureaucrats who have too much responsibility and none of the necessary authority to actually decide anything, and governments that want everything now. So, I just announced that I was going to be riding my bike on Wednesday and delegated things so that it could happen.

 

Shaky video from Harriman State Park

The train left Grand Central Station at 6:41 am, arriving in Ossining around 7:25 and then the ferry across the Hudson got to Haverstraw around 8:00. After leaving the outskirts of the city, this ride just disappears into the countryside, avoiding any towns or traffic for more than 60 km.

At about 50 km into the ride, as I was approaching the top of the hill in Fahnestock State Park, my phone chirped with an SMS, jerking my electronic leash. The plan was to continue east through the park and work my way south, back down towards Croton Harmon to take the 1:30 train, which would have gotten me back home around 3:00 but a little too late to deal with the latest greatest bureaucratic tangle that needed unsnarling. So, I turned around, headed downhill, set the GPS for the closest Metro-North station and sped down to the Cold Spring station to catch the 11:58 for home. 66 km in 3:06 and 1160 meters of vertical climbing. (Aside from the stretch across the Bear Mountain Bridge and north along the river for about five km, this entire route was either straight up or straight down. I swear my next ride is going to be somewhere flat!!)