Being injured is a state of mind

How I decided not to be injured anymore

“The end of my injury. Almost 4 months after I got injured, I, for the first time, was absolutely convinced, that my injury had completely healed. It probably already did so weeks ago, but I never fully trusted my body.”

This quote is from last week’s Das Z Letter. Although the news is great and not hard to comprehend, I want to elaborate how I came to this conclusion. But first, let’s go back to when it all began.

Injured

It is easy for me to specify the day I realized I had injured myself. It was Monday, March 6th. Six days before my 2023 A-race, the Bienwald Marathon in Kandel. An event, I had trained for 4 months.

On the mentioned Monday, I went on an easy recovery run and could not hide from myself anymore that I ran with a limb. It was not very unexpected, though. I had been recognizing an unusual muscle fatigue and tension in the upper thigh muscle for the past 3 weeks, but, hey, I had been pulling off 110 - 115 km peak weeks recently. No big surprise that my 44-year-old body was reacting a bit grumpy.

(Track workout in the legendary stadium of Monte Gordo, Portugal)

And still. On that Monday recovery run, my muscles weren’t easing out, like they should during the last week of tapering. They were tensioning up, instead. To a degree that I couldn’t run smoothly anymore.

Long story short: Gave my body some rest, then tried running again. Followed by more rest and one last running attempt the day before the marathon. Low and behold, things got worse instead of better. Much worse, in fact.

By the end of the week, I couldn’t even walk properly anymore and took the pain with me to bed at night. Good thing about it: There was absolutely no room for talking myself in some kind of

"Nah, it’s gonna be fine for the marathon. It’s just 42.2k, how bad can it hurt?"-B***S***.

In contrast, I was a smart runner and pulled the plug. Cancelled the race, informed my coach (who was even more upset and sad about the injury than I was) and got myself an orthopedist and MRI appointment to find out I got Osteitis Pubis. That’s an inflammation of the bursa. The rest is (injury) history.

(Holding hand/tail with Harry while being injured)

Healed

That was 4 months ago. A long time and surely countless things happened since then.

• I rested

• got shockwave treatment

• went to physiotherapy

• rode my bike

• swam

• rested even more

• witnessed my back collapse

• hired a second physiotherapist

• stretched and mobilized

• tried running

• got thrown back to zero

• rested even more

• stretched and mobilized even more

• tried run-walking

• continued run-walking

• combined run-walking with strength training

• started running uphill and took the cable car down

• ran my first 30 minutes flat on grass

• more uphills and cable cars

• first accidental downhill (missed the last cable car that day)

• joined a Vertical K race

• ran my first intentional downhill

• ran my first hour on grass

• ran my first hour on asphalt

• ran up and down mountains for 2 hours, for 3 hours, for 4 hours….

Well, those 4 hours happened just recently at the Nuts Pallas 37k in Finland, my first long trail race once last year’s Western States 100.

Schrödinger’s Injury

All great. Obviously, I am back to running. Yay. But I missed something. The exact moment when my injury was healed and gone. When did that actually happen?

During a good part of May, and all June, I answered the question:

"I saw on Strava you‘re running. Aren’t you still injured?"

with the following honest, but clueless response:

“I don’t know."

I really didn’t know. I was running, but not really. And I was still injured, but not really. Schrödinger's injury, so to speak.

Mindset

I believe that "being injured" is a state of mind. At least to a certain degree. It makes sense in many ways. This mindset helps us to acknowledge that our body needs time to heal. It asks for patience, but also grants us hope and perspective that everything will be good again, one day. It’s a mindset which is very much about acceptance, and we are forced to honestly commit to it. We need to submit and surrender. For a while.

On the other hand, we must not miss changing that mindset at one point. The smart bois and grlz of Munich's MT/MT gym call it "fragile mindset". If you constantly tell yourself that you’re injured, you’re going to train like an injured person and deny your body any chance of (re)learning how to react to stress and get resilient (again). This will backfire on your recovery process, and will potentially make it a never-ending story.

But when exactly is the time to change your mindset from "fragile" to "resilient"?

Timing & Action Steps

For some injuries, the date is set. If you’ve got a broken foot, it’s exactly 6 weeks until you start your running onboarding. You can literally count the days and mark your calendar.

But there are also injuries which don’t have such a clear endpoint. Like the one that I suffered. I was already pain-free after the first week of rest, but I could still feel an irritation that remained for months. A slight tension in my hip that would show up every time I ran on flat, or worked out for too long. I understood it as a signal from my body that the inflammation in my Pubis was still there, and that it would worsen, as soon as I stressed it too much. The haunting question was:

What is "too much"?

That left me with only one option. Stressing my body only a tiny little more every week and then see how it would react. And this is what I did. Or more precisely, what my coach Karim did. Hey smartly structured my workouts and training weeks with all the necessary caution and sure instinct.

The tension remained my acquaintance, but I could impose more and more stress on my body, every week. Sure, there’s been better weeks with less irritation and tension in my hip and worse ones that almost let me lose hope. (I apologize for everything I said to my physiotherapist during that time). But the overall performance curve only went one way: up.

Running culminates in 89 km, 9:17h and 2500 m of altitude gain including 2 weeks ago. Including a race, mostly flat running on asphalt and even some speed work. To me, this is more or less the workload of a 'normal' training week. Depending on what I am training for, of course. Undeniably, I am back to running.

Missing out

I think I could have allowed myself to call myself injury free sooner. Sadly, I didn’t. But let’s forget it. It is today that I say:

I am not injured anymore. And it’s wonderful!

3 weeks to go until Sierre Zinal. I can’t wait to see those 4000s.

Everything not Running

I answered a few interview questions for a magazine about the vegan lifestyle and diet. More on this in another Das Z Letter because I don’t know when the magazine will be out.

Answering those questions made me reflect on my reasons for living vegan. Or maybe, better put, reassure them.

Already decades ago, I found out what is good for my body and what not. However, it took me many more years to fully live up to these learnings and start eating healthy. Starting running surely was the final kick in the ass. Food is energy. And it is either good energy that my body can metabolize without many irritations. Or it is bad energy that, in addition, comes at the high price of putting my organism in a state of turmoil. The more you run, the harder you train and the more you're in love with the process, the easier food choices become.

But that’s just me. You might find different truths regarding your energy quality and provision. And then, that’s just you.

But there is also 'them'. The animals. They don’t care how fast I run or how quickly I recover. They also aren’t concerned about your heartburn and stomach pain. They just want to live a peaceful and unharmed life. And they deserve it.

So whatever food choices you make, keep in mind that there is not only you, but also them. Makes it much easier to do the right thing.

Consider a vegan diet.

(Making friends in little Tibet)

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Sprachnachricht

Alles was ihr hier im Das Z Letter lesen konntet (und ein paar Extradetails) wie immer auch auf deutsch, also Audiozusammenfassung aka “Sprachnachricht”.

Being injured is a state of mind (SPRACHNACHRICHT #15)