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Stick and stones may break my bones…and running can as well!

Many of you will know that I have been recently injured and unable to run. Most non-runners would ask ‘Well what is wrong with that?’ but where running is a part of your everyday life, it is like being told you shouldn’t breathe! Some of you may understand!

After almost five weeks of being sore, with no real signs of it getting better, I went along to have an ultrasound the other day and the verdict is that I am showing the early signs of a tibial stress fracture. Looking at the images from the ultrasound, i could see that the healthy part of the bone was smooth and where the injury had occurred and the bone was attempting to heal itself, it looked like a mountain range! The specialist told me that if I was to continue to run on it at this stage, then I could cause ‘disasterous damage.’ Hmmm, that doesn’t sound good! This injury has largely been the reason for my lack of new posts, if I was to be honest, I have been feeling rather despondent with running. As I have mentioned in previous posts, when the decision not to run is made by someone other than yourself, all you feel like doing is getting out there, however I think that the not knowing whether or not it was going to get better quickly or not was the hardest part. Now I know what it is, I can start making plans to getting it right and hopefully, in time, start running again.

So what is a tibial stress fracture?
To put it simply – A person with a tibial stress fracture has a thin crack in the shinbone, caused by overuse of the lower leg (hence occuring over time, not just on one occassion). Tibial stress fractures are most common in competitive runners. Although it sounds a bit unnatural, your bones deform in every day life. According to Newton’s third law “for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction”, just standing creates some force on your body because the earth is ‘pushing’ back up. Your body can withstand most of it since your bones are slightly elasticated and your muscles also absorb some of the shock/forces. However, when a muscle is strained or overworked, it stops taking the shocks and your bones’ force intake increases. Think about a car going over a speed bump: the shocks make it where you can’t feel the bump, but if your shocks stop working correctly, the bump is more apparent. Most people with tibial stress fractures recover completely with treatment. What actually caused my fracture is yet to be determined as there are many causes including (but not limited to) worn shoes (although not in my case!), sharp increases in intensity of workouts or mileage, or poor biomechanics.

So where to from here?
Unfortunately for me, I am out of the Auckland Marathon for this year. After visiting numerous specialists, I need to take my time coming back, slowly getting back up to speed. One of the specialists that I did visit (and very glad I did) was an osteopath – to check if everything was in alignment. Perhaps he could find something that wasn’t right. Basically what he found could have contributed to my stress fracture. My leg was trying to compensate for my hips ‘going off to my right’. The result was that my leg was trying to correct this mis-alignment, hence creating stress on my tibia, and over time causing it to fracture. This has meant my longest time without running in the last few years. I have still been doing low-impact workouts such as aqua-jogging and Spin classes, however these workouts still don’t beat the feeling running gives you. I have also used this downtime to get other things sorted as well – such as having my wisdom teeth out! I figured I might as well make the most of my ‘time off the road’!

While I have been recovering, I have also been tempted by another sport – cycling and am currently researching into what type of bike would suit me best. You will find many cyclists are former runners (or are still runners) now preferring the less impact on their joints. I am not ready to stop running entirely…I love it too much, but the cycling would be a valuable cross-training tool and who knows? Maybe a triathlon might be on the horizon!