There's No Crying In Baseball! Er...Running!

Anyone who's seen the movie "A League of Their Own", with an all-star cast providing an excellent dramatization of the short-lived GPBL--Girls' Professional Baseball League--knows the line well. You can even hear Tom Hanks' angry voice spitting it at one of his players, "There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!" Then, of course, vindication comes for those of us who watched, aghast, as he berated the woman and then was called on it by the umpire...who eventually threw him out of the game. But movie reviews need to be saved for another post.

My crying episode wasn't as well-documented, historically significant, or beautifully dramatized. It was just me, sitting up on a rock next to Boulder Res, wiping tears away quietly as more slid down my face. I wasn't met by an ultimately triumphant, chaotic vindication but rather by the calm, gentle understanding of my boyfriend who, finishing up his hourlong run at the res, approached me hesitantly. "You don't look happy," he said, and when he saw me crying he just hugged me. Man, what a decent guy, huh?

I registered for Backroads so long ago I don't remember it...well, long ago in running time anyway. Since then I've completed some substantial long hikes and some more substantial long runs. I've basked in the shock of my family and friends who remember me not long ago as the girl who wouldn't do a five-minute grocery run without her trusty pack of Winston S2's. I've endured blisters the size of my fingers running alongside the arches of my foot, training first in the mountains, then in the deep South, which afforded me the exact opposite training conditions, then back to the mountains. I felt truly awful when I found out that my coworker, Mike, who had also been training for Backroads, had to quit after twenty weeks due to a knee injury. After training so long you really empathize with someone who has to throw away that much time and effort due to injury. And I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have the same issue.

After Gregory got back from France (two days after my triumphant return from the South, during which I ran a substantial sixteener) and life calmed down a little, I fell back into my routine training schedule. I don't adhere to my training guide like it's my Bible; for one, it was written for much more advanced runners and for two, I would surely injure myself if I tried to stick to that schedule. A few days gone here and there isn't the end of the world and besides, I was still readjusting to the altitude. I went out one day intending to do ten miles. I did about seven and came back with shin splints, which worried me, since I usually ran them off during my workout, and a slight dull pain below my kneecap and around the outside of it. It wasn't ITB, but I wasn't sure what it was. I stretched well, iced it, stayed off it for a day or two and then took off for a seven-miler. Going out wasn't bad but coming back, I nearly started hitching, my knee hurt so badly. It didn't seem to be bothered by going uphill or on the flats, but going downhill was sheer misery. I got home, got on the Internet and, a towel-wrapped bag of ice strapped on my knee, started to do research. When I realized that my symptoms pointed towards chondromalacia, or "runner's knee", my blood ran cold. This was the sideliner. ITB you could stretch, shin splints usually meant some serious strnegth-training and extra stretches, and often you could tear your ACL to shreds and not realize it for months. But runner's knee, referring to an inflammation of the tendon and/or ligaments and cartilage holding the knee together on the outside, at the tibia and fibula, was one of those that required lots of rest, lots of ice, lots of pain and often, cortisone shots, knee drainage and surgery. By the time Gregory got home from his bike ride, I was freaking out and still significantly pained. He took one look at where I was hurting, another look at the explanation I'd found on the Internet, and nodded. Having an endurance athlete for your boyfriend is beneficial in many ways, but none so much as in-house sports physician. He tried to tell me they wouldn't be able to do anything, but I was in agony and wasn't dealing well, and made him take me to the ER. Sure enough, the doctor wrapped my knee, gave me a pair of crutches and some weak painkillers, and sent me on my way, telling me to see a sports physician if it didn't get better.

Over the next week I iced it, was gentle on it, didn't take any staircases going down. Didn't run, didn't work out, didn't do much. The following week I took on a 5 mile run with a little stiffness, but no pain, and I was elated. One night over dinner at Mina's, our recent fave Latin restaurant, Iw as babbling about ice skating and talked Greg into going with me. We hit the rec center for about an hour, and it was awesome. I've always skated better than I walk, and I was prancing about the rink as usual, feeling awesome. As we crawled into bed later, Gregory asked me if I'd worn the knee brace he'd bought for me skating. I said no, and he frowned a little. I didn't think much of it until the next morning, when I could barely get down the stairs of his apartment complex. I was miserably unhappy and, at my boyfriend's urging, called my doctor for a referral to a sports MD.

Now, thirty-six or so hours to my appointment with a sports physician at the University of Colorado Sports Medicine Center, I am mildly terrified. Gregory's warning was, "Even though you're probably not going to like what he has to say, I think you need to go see a specialist," and that was enough to make me realize that I'd probably be calling it quits on marathoning this year, at least for Boulder Backroads. I feel like an unjustly condemned prisoner, a little, and at the same time, absurd for even making the comparison. It's like, wow, I worked my ass off to get here, and now that I've come all this way, somebody is going to tell me I have to stop. It felt okay the other day when we went to the res, but I barely got a quarter of a mile in before the pain started up, merciless and vigilant. Gregory, the victim of some dozen or so cortisone shots, knee draining, and left with as little as 15% of the cartilage he really needs in his right knee, has been trying to warn me about my upcoming doctor appointment. I'm not going to like what he's going to have to say, orthopedic doctors generally go straight for surgery with chondromalacia, and in all likelihood I'd be dropping out of the marathon. The knowledge of this information is what brought me to tears the other day. I wasn't hurting that badly, I was just angry and sad. Angry because no matter what else, I had worked this hard to get here, and I probably wasn't going to hit my goal. Sad because that's a pretty pathetic notion to be angry about, my knee problems knocking me out of the marathon, if that's what happens (who knows? maybe the doc can fashion me some orthotics and I'll be good as new).

So instead of being angry and sad, I have decided instead to, at the very least, TRY to be grateful, instead. Grateful for everything in my life that allows me to run, grateful that I have food, shelter, good kicks and clean drinking water, which puts me above a good half of the rest of the world in terms of gifts. Grateful that my training brought me closer to my dad and allowed him the opportunity to participate in something he didn't really have the chance to the first time around, when I was a kid. Grateful that I've quit smoking and am making generally healthier lifestyle choices. Grateful that I'd rediscovered how incredible it is to just feel so good about something that's so easy, so natural, as running. Grateful that I have an amazing group of family and friends behind me no matter what. And yes, of course, grateful for Gregory. Gregory's one of those people who give you the impression that he's very emotionally in tune with himself and those around him, but not overt at all about expressing it. While I can appreciate this, I'm much the opposite most of the time, loud, dramatic, and overemotional. That day at the res, though, wasn't like that. It was a quiet little fury, a miserable anguish that I really didn't want to share with anyone, let alone the world around me. I was all at once terribly upset over my training and my knee, and mortified that I was upset--after all, what right did I have to be angry over something so insignificant. At the time I didn't want to display anything; the tears on my face were bad enough. At the same time I needed an anchor, something to hold me to the world. I watched Greg run towards me, his form has improved a thousandfold since he and his coach did a gait analysis, and he looked really beautiful running. And at the end of it, he was my anchor, holding me and holding me down at the same time, keeping me from screaming or flying into a million pieces, but letting me cry. As soon as we began talking I felt better, and even got him roaring with laughter--I made some crack about talking like a toughass and not being able to cry when you do that, and he lost it in giggles. It was a good reminder...to dwell on the things you can cherish, from a long weekend spent with relatives rarely seen to a tiny moment in your life like feeling on top of the world when you make someone you love laugh, and to let the rest of it go. Life's too short to spend any significant amount of it crying. And besides, there's no crying in baseball...or running.