Kim Smith's calf was ballooned up like a melon.

From her facebook page

Since everyone has sent so many nice messages I thought I would update. Had an MRI and I tore my Soleus muscle

the feet are next in line wrote:

For all you amateur doctors, my opinion is that her hip flexors started going into spasms and pulled on the calf tightening it up. Why does this happen? Because your body knows you are about to do damage and acts appropriately to make you stop doing what you have been doing. In this case, it was running.

And when you keep running on it, a tear can occur very easily. If you stop right when it tightens up, you can be back in a week or less. If you tear it, at least 6 weeks off.

To all the keyboard warriors and experts, get a life. In any professional sport injuries happen and as a personal friend of Kim's you all have no idea what your talking about, it was bad luck and that's part of any sport. The racing flat was the same as she wore in NYC Marathon this past fall (just a different colour) and she has been doing all her workouts in the flat. Her diet is "see" food. She eats everything and in massive quantities. You douche bags need to grow-up and find something important to talk about because you obviously don't have a clue. If you don't know something 100% than keep your mouth shut.

I respect Kim's drive for taking out the BAA Marathon like that, but seeing her running for so long I was wondering about her stride. It looked like one leg was working different than the other and one arm was crossing way over her body and she didn't appear very symmetrical. Was it the camera angle? Is that her normal stride?

Rirunner wrote:

To all the keyboard warriors and experts, get a life. In any professional sport injuries happen and as a personal friend of Kim's you all have no idea what your talking about, it was bad luck and that's part of any sport. The racing flat was the same as she wore in NYC Marathon this past fall (just a different colour) and she has been doing all her workouts in the flat. Her diet is "see" food. She eats everything and in massive quantities. You douche bags need to grow-up and find something important to talk about because you obviously don't have a clue. If you don't know something 100% than keep your mouth shut.

And you need to realize that in "any professional sport" performances and injuries will be talked about and speculated upon. And yes, people will even do this (gasp) to personal friends of yours if they are paid to run in a high profile race.

That torn soleus us no "bad luck" injury...it is not as it a car hit her or she fell through a man hole. It is training related.

I can assure you Kim does not have an eating disorder. Perhaps she could eat healthier, but so could many people.

Kim is naturally skinny. If Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan were to stop running they would eventually have normal or slim body types. Kim, on the other hand, would still look like a string bean. The reason Kim looks so thin is because she is naturally super skinny and is running way more miles than she did just 3 years ago.

Kim doesn't stretch or do any strength training. This is a better theory on why she tore her Soleus.

Dear Kim's friend. You just provided support to the theory of Malnurishment (not eating disorder). "She may have lost weight since the last Olympics". Not kidding!!!! That's the point a few posters have made. She did not look healthy. Her form was off too. Get healthy Kim we look forward to seeing you on the roads again.

dean moriarty wrote:

Fair enough. Thanks for the interesting and unique factoid about the marathon being 26 miles long. If you do a little Googling, you'll find that Smith is quite comfortable leading wire-to-wire, and may even prefer running that way. I'll help you out a bit.

http://www.dyestat.com/3us/college/4xc-ncaa/index.htm#women

If you couldn't figure out the point of the poster talking about the marathon being 26 miles long and not 16 and your comeback was talking about how she lead from wire to wire in a 6k cross country race, then you really don't understand marathon racing. Someone said she was unbeatable today. That was an absurd statement. Many times someone has looked great in the first 15 miles and then blown up later in the race, whether from cramps, dehydration, or whatever. Going out too hard may have caused the calf problem, maybe it didn't.

I like Kim Smith and was sad to see her have to drop out. She is a great runner and will be back. Reminding people that it is a 26 mile race and not 16 was not a post that should have been put down. He was just stating a fact that happens in every marathon. People go out too hard and things happen. It doesn't mean they had bad luck and would have won the race if it weren't for "crashing" the last 10k or having to drop out for something that happened during the race. It is a 26.2 mile race and nobody is unbeatable or can say they would have won, unless they cross the line first.

I am not a fan, and I didn't even begin watching the video!

Came here for pics of said calf. Leaving disappointed.

Fine. But if you watch the interview, and look at her PR's, and you look at her coach and his history at Boston, and you look at the weather, and you look at the tailwind, and you look at the times the men ran, and you look at the way she always likes to run from the front, and you listen to how she stated afterward that she was following her race plan to a T, and you notice that she suffered a freak injury midway through, you might come a conclusion that she could have won that race. She's not an idiot who bombs out of every race after taking a massive lead. She's a frontrunner.

And you certainly can't blame her race strategy on her injury. That doesn't make any sense. Here's a piece of conventional wisdom: "Don't take the lead too early at Boston, or your Soleus muscle is going to explode." Has that ever happened to an elite marathoner, mid-race, ever?

Where is the picture of the swollen calf muscle?

here you go:http://www.freefoto.com/preview/806-11-7732/Cow

ohohhello wrote:

Where is the picture of the swollen calf muscle?

Thats a swollen cow. We want to see the swollen/ballooned calf!

You really don't understand marathoning. She didn't win; she didn't even finish the race. There should be no thoughts of she could have won. This isn't like she got passed 200 meters from the finish. Her calf probably did explode because she was not ready to do what she was trying to do. Would it have exploded on an easy 4 mile run? No. Maybe she was overtrained or dehydrated, but whatever it was that caused her to drop out, she was still 10 MILES from the finish. There is no way anyone can project that she might have won or had a good chance to win.

As I said, I have nothing against her and I truly feel bad that she didn't do as well as she wanted, but for anyone to say she would have won if she hadn't dropped out, is insulting the women that did finish at the top. It wasn't her day; in the future maybe it will be. Deal with it and stop making excuses for someone that dropped out. It happens.

Who is making excuses? It was a freak injury.

Or, like you say, whenever someone is on goal pace for the marathon halfway in, their soleus muscle explodes. That makes perfect sense. There have been countless examples of this phenomenon. You should have seen the bodies strewn around Newton! Those idiots won't make that mistake again - running goal pace LIKE IDIOTS.

dean moriarty wrote:

Who is making excuses? It was a freak injury.

Or, like you say, whenever someone is on goal pace for the marathon halfway in, their soleus muscle explodes. That makes perfect sense. There have been countless examples of this phenomenon. You should have seen the bodies strewn around Newton! Those idiots won't make that mistake again - running goal pace LIKE IDIOTS.

That is not a freak injury. Only an idiot would believe that. The injury surely had it's origin in some aspect of her training leading up to the race. As you said, running a marathon at MGP pace should not lead to injury just over halfway through the effort. Think about it.

dean moriarty wrote:

Who is making excuses? It was a freak injury.

Or, like you say, whenever someone is on goal pace for the marathon halfway in, their soleus muscle explodes. That makes perfect sense. There have been countless examples of this phenomenon. You should have seen the bodies strewn around Newton! Those idiots won't make that mistake again - running goal pace LIKE IDIOTS.

Dean, you really don't get it. A marathon (as we discussed earlier is 26.2 miles long) running goal pace for part of it doesn't mean that you can maintain that pace for all of it (see Kim Smith) or even finish the race. Running a nice half marathon in March doesn't always equate to a good marathon in April, especially when your body is somewhat emaciated. When you look at her body the outcome is not surprising, physiology isn't discussed in Kerouc.

Running a fast half marathon in the buildup to the full is often a setup for heartbreak. Better to be a Ryan Hall in this case.