Something I Read

I thought I would note something I read the other day. I'm reading a book called Why We Run by Bernd Heinrich. My Dad actually loaned me this book and so far, it's quite interesting. Bernd is a life long runner with accomplishments from his college cross country running team, running barefoot in Africa, to ultra distance races. He is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont and in this book blends personal experience in world-class distance running with a firsthand account of the biology of running. 

I'm not finished reading Why We Run, but I wanted to include an excerpt from the book that I found fascinating. During his PhD research, Bernd was challenged by a colleague, Ed, to run a sub-2:30 marathon. He writes:

Soon after I started training, I got knee pain. I went to an orthopedic surgeon, who said, "You have (some sort of) cartilage degeneration. If you don't stop running, I'm going to have to take your kneecap off and throw it in the garbage can." His exact words. They rang in my ears a long time. I figured, instead, that I had a loose piece of cartilage, which I could get rid of by grinding it down by running, so I increased my mileage. 

Ed turned out to be right, the orthopedist wrong. A half a year later I did almost what Ed predicted. But I didn't bring him the news. When I trotted up to his office, he'd already read the Boston paper, and he greeted me by calling out my finishing time: "Two twenty-five!" I'd run 5 minutes faster than he had predicted.

What?! I am not questioning the 2:25 marathon, albeit a more than impressive time. I'm questioning his decision on how to deal with his knee pain. I only wish the pain in my knee was just a loose piece of cartilage I could "grind" down by running and it would be gone! A loose piece of cartilage is one of the things I was hoping Dr. Anderson would find when she did my knee scope. Something she could just get rid of and I would be as good as new. That didn't happen.

That said, Mr. Heinrich's words are food for thought. Even though I am trying to follow the teaching of Matt Fitzgerald, the author of Brain Training (he says to react to pain very quickly and back off running with a hair trigger), I need to make sure I'm not being too timid. In the end, it's hard to decided what is right to do or not do. Every person who has knee pain has a different experience and what may be right for them, may not be right for me. I've been thinking more and more lately that the best thing I can do for myself is to take all of this research, information, and advice into account, then do my best to figure out what works for me. It's an ongoing process.