Finally after getting the runaround with doctors and tests, the verdict is in: I have a bad stress fracture on my tibia about three inches below the knee. The fracture seems to be about 3-4 inches long across the bone. It was frustrating that it took so long to get a definitive diagnosis, but I also had hammered my knee very bad and it took 7 weeks for that pain to go down. An MRI concentrated on the knee and only after I asked the doctor twice to look very close at the pictures again did he see the fracture down below. It also lit up like a light bulb in a bone scan.
So, I could be out another 4-8 weeks. I’m betting on 8. I cancelled plans to race until August.
Lessons learned.
- Don’t run 100 miles on a busted leg. That was by far the most painful experience in my life. Pretty crazy. But I got that 500-mile Rocky Racoon jacket! Ya, right.
- I broke one of my rules about racing with an injury. I could tell that the pain I felt was out of the ordinary but I went ahead and ran 100 miles on a fracture. I think it made a one inch fracture turn into 3-4 inches.
- I’ve learned what bone pain feels like and should have pressed the doctors for an immediate bone scan so I could have started early treating it right. I probably set back my recovery a few weeks because I thought it was just a soft tissue problem.
- Don’t run in shoes that allow me to over-pronate. Don’t run barefoot or walk around barefoot so much. All my damage was to the medial (inside) side of my leg due to over-pronation.
- There are far more important things in life than running. Down time is a blessing to refocus and do other things for awhile.