After 32 Years - Regretably Done

Why not take up cycling? I'm 51 and absolutely love it. You can train hard several times a week. My only issues are the lower back, the health of which depends on how diligent I am at stretching and at doing certain mat exercises.

31 years ago I started running as a HS freshman... many great days and races from then to now. Thinking of switching to bike racing because the first 20 minutes of every run is getting pretty ugly. I don't even know what my basement looks like, I hate to go down stairs so much.

Glory Days Passed wrote:

Due to a persistant groin injury I have come to terms that my racing days are over. It seems like all I can muster anymore is an occasional easy run. Treatments and streching have not helped. Enjoy it while it lasts. You never know. Being able to run healthy is a real gift. I got to enjoy the gift for 32 years. More than most. Regretably done.

f*** you. my career was shorter than yours and now i can't run a step. am i angry? yes.

Hi-

Just wanted to offer my encouragement and my experience to you. I have been running for 36 years - most of it at a top competitive level, and relatively injury free. Two years ago, I was rolling along doing masters racing, and I tore my plantar. What I thought would be a couple of months off, turned into a couple of years! It was like my body suddenly decided, 'ok, it's time to break down now.' I had PF release surgery, and it took awhile to heal, but the compensation injuries from running and walking weird were far worse.

In a span of two years, I suffered 10 different major injuries, and probably was only able to jog for 3 or 4 months of it - total, and not in succession. It was awful, and there were times when I feared that I would never jog again, let alone race. It has now been 26 months since my last race, and after many starts and stops, I am back to semi-normal running again. The thing that finally got me back on my feet was acupuncture - the traditional Chinese kind.

I am a Western Medicine type of person, but this really worked to break the pain cycle and allow me to start back jogging, completely from scratch, but jogging nonetheless. I literally had to teach myself to run again, because I had been limping around for so long, my body had gone into protective jogging mode. It was very strange and annoying, and took forever.

I am not sure if I will race again - I have certain standards I have to meet in my training before I toe the line, and I'm not certain my body can hold up. But the experience has taught me not to be greedy and to appreciate every run I can complete without another injury cropping up.

I guess my main point is not to give up on yourself, if you truly feel you can run again. I actually had people (runners) tell me to 'simply find another hobby...' They didn't get it, but I always knew, even in my darkest hour, when I could barely walk across the room, that I would run again.

Anyway, good luck. If you believe in yourself and are willing to be patient, you WILL run again.

man i feel your pain...i started a run a week ago and tore my calf running slowly a mile and a half in. out of nowhere. wtf? getting older sucks.

fyi it's a week and it still hurts. how long for you to heal up?

WE RAN THROUGH BLIZZARDS, THUNDERSTORMS, freezing rain, covered bridges, creeks, campgrounds, cemeteries, parks, a nuclear power plant, county fairs, and, once, a church service. We were chased by goats, geese, a crazed groundhog, guards (the nuclear power plant), a motorcycle gang, an armed man in a pickup, a sheriff's deputy, and dogs, both fierce and friendly. We ran when 2 feet of snow covered the roads, and when the windchill was 30 below. We ran when it was 80 degrees at seven in the morning. We ran on streets, sidewalks, highways, cinder tracks, dirt roads, golf courses, Lake Erie beaches, bike trails, across yards, and along old railroad beds. Seven days a week, 12 months a year, year after year.

During the hot days of July and August, Ed ran without a shirt or socks; I always wore both. Norm ran with a screw in his ankle and joked that it was coming loose. Ed was faster going downhill; I was better going up. The three of us met at a race and became training partners, competitors, best friends. We ran together on Saturday mornings, usually a 20-miler along the shore of Lake Erie or a 22-mile route over hilly country roads through Ashtabula County [Ohio]. We ran thousands of miles and more than a dozen marathons together, but most of the time we ran alone.

We gave directions to lost drivers, pushed cars out of snow banks, called the electric company about downed lines and the police about drunks. We saved a burlap bag full of kittens about to be tossed off a bridge, carried turtles from the middle of the road, returned lost wallets, and were the first on the scene of a flipped pickup truck.

We ran the Boston Marathon before women were allowed to enter and way before the Kenyans won. We were runners before Frank Shorter took the Olympic gold at Munich, before the running boom, nylon shorts, sports drinks, Gore-Tex suits, heart monitors, running watches, and Nikes.

We ate constantly, or so it seemed. My favorite midnight snack was cookie dough or cold pizza. Ed enjoyed cinnamon bread, which he sometimes ate a loaf at a time. Norm downed buttered popcorn by the bucketful and Finnish cookies by the dozen. We all loved ice cream, and drank large vanilla shakes two at a time.

Still, friends said we were too thin. They thought we looked sick and worried something was wrong.

We measured our lives in miles down to the nearest tenth, more than 100 miles a week, 400 a month, 5,000 a year.

The smells! From passing cars: pipe tobacco, exhaust fumes, and sometimes the sweet hint of perfume. From the places we passed: French fries, bacon, skunk, pine trees, dead leaves, cut hay, mowed grass, ripe grapes, hot asphalt, rotten apples, stagnant water, wood smoke, charcoal grills, mosquito spray, road kill. And from ourselves: sunscreen and sweat.

Some people smiled and waved. A few whistled. Once or twice women from passing cars yelled we had nice legs. Others, usually teenage boys in sleek, black cars, yelled obscenities, called us names, gave us the finger, and mooned us. They threw firecrackers, lit cigarettes, soda cans, half-eaten ice cream cones, beer bottles (both full and empty), squirted us with water, drove through puddles to spray us, swerved their cars to force us off the road, swung jumper cables out the window to make us duck, and honked their horns to make us jump.

We saw shooting stars, a family of weasels, a bam fire, a covered wagon heading west, and a couple making love in a pickup. We ran with deer on a golf course, jumped a slow-moving train to get across the tracks, hid in ditches during lightning storms, slid across an intersection during a freezing rain, and dived into Lake Erie to cool off in the middle of a hot run. We drank from garden hoses, gas station water fountains, soda machines, lawn sprinklers, and lemonade stands. We carried toilet paper, two quarters, sometimes a dog biscuit.

We were offered rides by "The Chosen Few" motorcycle gang, old ladies, drunks, teenagers, truckers, a topless dancer (not topless at the time but close, real close), and a farmer baling hay, but we never accepted a single one. We argued about the dancer.

We were nervous before races and said we'd quit running them when we weren't. We won trophies, medals, baskets of apples, bottles of wine, windbreakers, T-shirts, pizza, pewter mugs, running suits, shoes, baseball caps, watches, a railroad spike, and, once, $500. Often we didn't win anything, although we never looked at it that way.

Ed liked to race from the front and dare other runners to catch him. I preferred to start a little slower, stalk those who went out too fast, and sneak up on them around 20 miles when they began to look over their shoulders. I felt like a wolf, and they were the prey. When I passed, I pretended not to be tired, and never looked back.

Our goal was to qualify for the Olympic Trials Marathon, to run faster and farther, to beat other runners.

Did we ever have runner's high? Didn't it get boring? What did we think about? Why did we always look so serious? Sometimes. Sometimes. Running. We didn't know we did. One spring day it rained so hard the road was one giant ankle-deep puddle, and Ed was huffing, and our feet were splashing, and it struck us funny. We laughed until we collapsed, tears and rain running down our faces. We joked about the time Ed had to pee and caught himself showering a snake, the time we got lost during a winter storm and refused to turn around, and the time we ran by Don King's ranch and were mistaken for two boxers. (We never understood how anyone could mistake us for boxers, but we loved it.)

We felt guilty about the time we ran into a church service being held in the middle of a covered bridge, and were too tired, too inconsiderate, too stubborn to turn around, so we sprinted down the center aisle, dodging the two men with collection plates, and ran out the other end of the bridge while the congregation sang "Praise God from whom all blessings flow...'

And the dogs! The ones that tried to follow us home and the ones that attacked us. The time that Ed, Norm, and I yelled at a growling Doberman, and told it to go home. The owner jumped in his pickup, chased us down the dirt road, swearing he'd shoot us for bothering his dog. We ran through a field and across a four-lane highway, circled back through the woods, hid beneath the underpass, and then jogged into a gas station where we celebrated our escape with ice-cold Cokes.

Or the time a sheriff's deputy stopped his cruiser to protect us from a German shepherd as large as a Poland China hog in a nearby field. The dog jumped through the open window and landed on the deputy's lap, and, while they wrestled in the front seat, we ran, afraid of what might happen if either ever caught up with us.

We found pliers, purses, golf balls, bolt cutters, billfolds, money (once, over $200--returned to an 18-year-old boy--no reward, no thanks), tape cassettes, CDs, sunglasses, school books, porn magazines, a Navajo ring, car jacks, a fishing pole, a pair of handcuffs (no key), an eight ball, and a black bra (36C).

We ran farther and faster. We sprinted up long steep hills by the Grand River until all we could do was stagger. We ran intervals on a dirt track: 20 quarter-miles in under 70 seconds, the last lap in 56 flat. We got lightheaded, our hands tingled, and sometimes blood vessels in our eyes ruptured from the effort.

We ran because it beat collecting stamps, because we were running toward something, because we were running away, because we were all legs, lungs, and heart, because we were afraid of who or what might catch us if we stopped.

One winter, while running twice a day, I was on my way home from a 7-mile run, and I couldn't remember if it was morning or night, if when I finished I would shower and go to work or shower and go to bed. I looked at the horizon and the stars, the passing cars, and the lighted barns for a clue, but couldn't figure it out. Ed said one time he went out for a run and bumped into himself coming back from the previous one.

We lost toenails and we pulled muscles. We suffered frostbite, hypothermia, heat exhaustion, sunburn, blisters, dehydration, and tendinitis. We were stung by bees, bitten by black flies, and attacked by red-winged blackbirds. Sometimes, after a long run, speed workout, or a marathon, our legs would be so sore, our Achilles so inflamed, that we could barely walk, and we'd limp or shuffle painfully when going from the couch to the refrigerator or from the front door to the mailbox.

We treated aches with ice and heating pads, or soaked our legs in DMSO, sometimes in Epsom salts and hot water. We tried medical doctors, surgeons, chiropractors, acupuncturists, podiatrists, massage therapists, trainers, and quacks. We were given shots of novocaine and cortisone, told to take ibuprofen, Tylenol, and aspirin. We were warned that we were ruining our knees, our hips, damaging our feet, breaking down too much blood, that we would suffer arthritis and degenerative joints.

BUT SOMETIMES IT WAS LIKE FLOATING, as if you were sitting on top of a pair of legs that you didn't think would ever get tired or slow down.It was as if the legs were yours but they weren't.

It was as if we were part animal: a running, flying animal. A horse, a bird. It was like feet kissing the pavement and effortless strides, the body along for the ride. It was like sitting in Ed's '67 Corvette, that monster engine gulping high-octane fuel and turning 6,000 rpms, your foot ready to pop the clutch. Like freedom and invincibility. When we ran around comers, we were jets sweeping in formation.

We each had a resting pulse in the low 40s and body fat of 7 percent or less. I was 6' 2", raced at 148 pounds, and went through a pair of running shoes every 6 weeks.

Once, I experienced chest pains, a sharp stab beneath the ribs. A Saturday morning, 22-mile run. Seven steep hills. We raced up the first hill to find out if it was my heart or not, and when I did not drop, we raced up the second and third. After 6 miles the pain eased off, and Ed said if it had been a heart attack, it must have been a mild one. Thousands of miles later, a doctor unfamiliar with a runner's heart sent Ed to the emergency room where he was poked, prodded, hooked up, and given oxygen. Finally, Ed said enough was enough, pulled the IV, and ran home. Two weeks later, he set an age-50 record for the mile in a local meet.

Although we ran faster and faster, it was never quite fast enough. We failed to qualify for the Olympic Trials. Still, four times we drove for hours and slept in our cars to watch others compete for the three Olympic spots. Then, just as we once stalked other runners, time stalked us.

We began looking over our shoulders and thinking about the marathons we had run instead of thinking about the next race. We slowed down. Our bodies balked at 100-mile weeks, and it took longer to recover from a hard run. Sometimes when the weather was bad--very hot was always worse than very cold--we took a day off. Sometimes we would skip a day because we were sore or tired. We stopped giving the finger to those who ran us off the roads. We gained 5, 7, 10 pounds. More.

Now, Ed has a granddaughter; Norm has "screw pains," and I have a retirement clock and deformed toes. We've turned gray, lost hair, and joined AARP. We run 25, 30 miles a week. From time to time, we race, no marathons but shorter races, 3, 4 miles, maybe a 10-K. We measure our lives in days, months, and years, not miles.

Ed and Norm still live in Ohio; I moved to North Carolina, then to Minnesota. We no longer run together, but we keep in touch and reminisce about the time the newspaper ran a front-page story about a group of snowmobilers who had ridden nearly 10 miles on a day when the temperature was 5 below. We had passed them during a 20-mile run. We argue about who threw the rock at the house, whose fault it was we got lost, and which one of us the topless dancer really wanted to take for a ride.

We complain that we're running slower than we once did, and make jokes about timing ourselves with calendars and sundials. Sometimes when we're running we'll spot other runners ahead of us and the urge to race comes back, and we'll do our best to catch them. Last fall while I was running in a park, I overheard a high school coach urge his runners to pass "the old, gray-haired guy." I held them off for a mile although it almost killed me, and, when I had completed circling the park, I ran by the coach and said, "Old guy, my ass."

But my ass is getting old along with my other body parts. When I sometimes fantasize about one more marathon, the fantasy seldom lasts more than a day. Fast marathons and 100-mile weeks are things of the past.

And what did we learn from running 70,000 miles and hundreds of races, being the first to cross the finish line and once or twice not crossing it at all, those runs on icy roads in winter storms and those cool fall mornings when the air was ripe with the smell of grapes, our feet softly ticking against the pavement?

We learned we were alive, and it felt good. God, it felt so good

STANDING O.

Especially that bag of kittens, what sub-human swine would DO that?

YOU have in the words of Hunter S. Thompson: stomped on the terra!

i remember when that was originally posted. probably the best piece of prose ever written on what it feels like to be a serious runner.

Don't have regrets man. You've had a good long career and now it's over. It'll give you time for other things; career, family, new hobbies, etc. Right now I'll bet you look at that day 20 years ago when you started running as a big turning point in your life. 20 years from now you'll look back on this day, the day that you stopped racing, in the same positive light.

How much does acupuncture cost? How long do have to continue the treatment? Is there any pain? 53 yearold male runner in pain.

Maybe you should all drop the distance running and get big into SPRINTING?

Lots on nice posts... Thank You...

I have been an athlete to long to do nothing. I can still cross train and have gotten in to lifting weights a bit and actually kind of like it. I have an interest in open water swimming. I know I won't be competitive at it but somehow swimming 2 miles in the ocean interests me. I'll do what I can with whatever little running I can do but its dissapointing to not be able to really pursue the sport I am most passionate about.

I never had any knee problems from age 16 to 35; and I ran many 100 mile weeks in my 20s, up to my early 30s. Now I've had 4 meniscus arthroscope jobs on both knees and can't run anymore. I think softball and basketball in my 40s is to blame.

done at 50, too wrote:

I never had any knee problems from age 16 to 35; and I ran many 100 mile weeks in my 20s, up to my early 30s. Now I've had 4 meniscus arthroscope jobs on both knees and can't run anymore. I think softball and basketball in my 40s is to blame.

It's that side to side stuff that will get you. Don't think I will be on the tennis court anytime soon.

I actually think I damaged my meniscus doing of all things yoga. Just some light stretching for me, these days.

As far as the OP (and all the other posters with similar stories) - change that from "regret" to "unfortunate." It's sounds like you worked hard, got great results, and enjoyed what you did. Don't regret that. It's unfortunate that you can't run the way you once did. Hey, even Secretariat retired. Of course, he probably had the best retirement of anything on the planet, ever. But that's another story....

Mmm....are you sure that this thing won't go away eventually?

At age 39 I got a leg injury and could'nt run at all for months, or run properly for much longer. I missed my first track season in 27yrs. I didn't think I'd ever race again. When I was able to run, it was a shocking struggle to kep up with people that I was always way ahead of.

Before the injury I did our annual road mile in 4:27.

A year later, I couldn't run it.

2 years later I did 4:45.

3 years later I did 4:39.

4 years later I did 4:35.

Of course, every case is different, and your injury is different to mine. But don't throw in the towel just yet....are you SURE? 1 year off, and you never know what could happen????

life is short, but dying is not so bad.

It's a tough break to give it up after so long but don't throw in the towel yet. I've run pretty much injury free for 20+ years until about 6 months ago. Out of nowhere I develop a torn meniscus. I took to the bike to keep from getting overweight, it's not like running but has many similarities. I'm now back to running(after surgery) 3-4 days per week and biking 1-3 days per week. My fitness came back quicker than I thought and I owe it to the bike.

When I rode the bike I did everything by heartrate and time. If I rode the bike for 70 minutes at a heartrate that was close to an easy 10 mile run pace I equated it to that. Some days I rode hills on the bike very hard and called that a tempo. Some days I did intervals on the bike 6 minutes hard 2 easy and called those intervals. All in all it helped keep me stay somewhat fit over the course of a 5-6 month lay-off. I don't know how long my knees will hold up to the running but at least now I have an option other than walking or swimming. It takes awhile to get used to the bike but your running mentality will make you ride the bike hard. Good Luck.

it ain't over till it's over

The acupuncturist I see is not cheap - $60 a pop - and my insurance doesn't cover it. However, I just saw that it can be deducted as a medical expense on your incomde taxes, so that's a bit of help.

I was going once a week, until we got things under control. Now, I am going every other week, and will likely string it out to once a month. I have been going for about 9 months now, but I noticed improvement after 2 or 3 treatments.

I won't tell you that it's not painful. Some days are better than others. I found if I was dehydrated or worn out from running, it was more painful. However, it's a kind of pain that is over very quickly (in a second or two), and you also know that it is helping.

I would highly recommend it, if you can afford it. I see Dr. Ma in North Boulder, but I am not sure where you live. Good luck.