Accenture Chicago International Triathlon 8/29/04

It had been five years of frustrated efforts to return to my love of long-distance running and I just could not get rid of the 35 pounds that had accumulated during my hiatus. During those years I became increasingly creaky when I tried to get out of bed in the morning, walking stairs started to feel like a major workout, and my feeble attempts to start running led to some niggling pains due to the pounding the lard was giving my body – clearly things weren’t going right…

Then at Christmas, my trusted running buddy Keith Binge infected me with his newfound excitement for biking, which allowed him to exercise while minimizing the weight he would put on a leg that he had smooshed up in a skydiving mishap. I tried it and I liked it … I also revisited my long-dormant interests in swimming for the same reasons and a plan to formalize this into a triathlon crystallized logically. January and February went like a peach, I lost more than half of the weight, I was riding high, and I signed up for Chicago. I knew March would be a brief down month for training as I would spend most of my spare time to fix up our house to sell – I just did not consider the caveat to never take things for granted.

While working overhead on a light fixture I felt a shooting pain in my shoulder and down my left arm. Over the next week, the pain got worse, my left hand got tingly and insensitive to touch, and I lost much of the strength in my arm. A series of x-rays, nerve conduction studies, and MRI scans did exclude brain tumors and other major nasties, but I was apparently suffering from degenerative arthritis in my spine and hip. Arthritis in my neck was pressing onto the nerve roots and I was fearing to lose the use of my arm – clearly triathlon training and the Chicago event were not in the cards now.

A combination of physical therapy and anti-inflammatories fixed the immediate symptoms in my arm but the underlying problem of a rusting body remained. The rheumatology quack did not help matters by insisting that the arthritis was actually brought on by my running years before – I might as well resign myself to a fate of turning into a prezel shape. Fortunately, the physiotherapist had diametrically opposite views on the issue and suggested that I should soon return to a life filled with exercise and stretching. With Chicago two weeks off and not anywhere on my radar screen, I took my first cautious steps with some swimming. I stretched and loosened, did some biking, even tried a bit of running. To my great surprise, matters improved rapidly and I changed from viewing exercise as the cause of the problem to it being my best bet at holding it off for as long as possible. My plans had thus changed yet again, the Chicago tri would now not serve as an athletic event for me, it would mark the starting point of my endeavor to battle the debilitating prospects and hold them off for as long as I can. thanks for all of your help and wise words to get me there.

If you like, read the race report from that race.

back to lobsterman's running page