IPOS – injured piece of shit
/ˈinjərd/ /pēs/ /əv/ /SHit/
noun
1 A (foolish) runner that ignored all the warning signs their body gave them, sustaining an injury, rendering them temporarily incapable of running or doing anything useful with their existence.
Origin: @ultrarunningmemes
“Liz won’t be making it out to Thursday Dirtbag workouts for a while, because she is an injured piece of shit”
At first, the idea of spending several weeks sidelined with an injury and unable to run seemed like the end of the world. I will begin with a disclaimer: yes, I am fully aware a tibial stress fracture that keeps me from running is, in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. I should be, and am, grateful to be in good health, with all of my limbs (mostly) intact, no terminal diseases (that I know of) and a body that still lets me walk, bike, do yoga and live a beautiful human life. Now, back to my microscopic world where I feel like I’m in a catastrophic state of not being able to crush entire pizzas or spend my days off running up and down mountains; being an injured piece of shit sucks!
I have witnessed many friends sidelined with uncooperative IT bands, torn muscles, sprained ankles and any other myriad of overuse injuries from running. I’ve often wondered how anyone could possibly deal with several weeks or months without the ability to run, or do the thing they loved the most whether it be skiing, climbing, dancing, yoga, swimming – you get it. I hoped I would never have to find out. I mean, that COULD NEVER possibly happen to me because I would lose my freaking mind. I actually couldn’t imagine it. But here I am, 8 weeks later, almost-sorta-close to coming out the other side. And while I’m not in the clear yet, this time off hasn’t seemed nearly as terrible as I expected.
As soon as it was confirmed that I did, in fact, have a stress fracture, some panic did set in because of the certainty of how long, and what exactly it takes for that kind of injury to heal. It wasn’t an iffy feeling in my knee that might go away, or a tendon that was kinda-sorta-sore-but-I-could-mostly-ignore-it. The bone was/is f*ckered and the only way it’s going to heal is if.you.stay.off.of.it. For several weeks. It’s not magically going to heal in 2 weeks. You can’t dry needle, or massage, or ultrasound the shit out of it. No amount of KT tape or frequency of compression-sock-wearing will fuse it back together (tried). Tiger balm? LOL, not even close buddy. You have to wait, at LEAST 4-6 weeks, and try not to f*ck it up more. And even then (aka now), if you push it one step too far, you could end up back at square one.
My early thoughts focused on everything I would miss out on. I can’t run the Boston Marathon, I can’t run Yakima Skyline 50km. My training for Canadian Death Race 125km will have to start from scratch. How will my body change when I’m not running 4-10 hours a week? Will I gain weight? Will I hate it? Does this mean I should stop eating Whitebark banana bread EVERY DAY? DEAR GODDDD WHYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!?! I will lose fitness. I will be so bored. I will see everyone doing fun shit on Instagram and Strava and I will sit at home, by myself, having a big sad.
Things were looking pretty grim. But over the last several weeks I’ve realized that being an injured piece of shit isn’t all bad, and there are actually some pretty sweet perks for you to look forward to should you ever find yourself in my predicament.
Let’s review, shall we?
1.Strangers are really nice to you
Turns out when you have a serious limp, coworkers, friends and strangers alike all frequently ask you how you’re doing and check in on you, which actually felt pretty nice. Yay attention! A man voluntold his young sons to carry my grocery bags to my car for me when he saw me struggling to hobble with the heavy bags across the parking lot during my first IPOS grocery shop attempt. A woman I didn’t know at the gym saw my swagger and made sure I wasn’t walking home, offering me a ride in case I was. Note to self – return the favor when I see fellow IPOS’s in society in future.
2. Excuse not to tough it out when it’s so cold outside your face hurts
Okay this became less relevant since we had one of the nicest March’s I can recall in the Bow Valley. However, the first two weeks I was injured (end of February), it was in the realm of -35 degrees celcius outside and it felt fan-friggin-tastic to feel no obligation to face exposure to the outdoors for any reason. It still hurt quite a lot to walk so I drove EVERYWHERE, and with my car parked in underground parking, I was able to live day-to-day, blissfully unaware and indifferent to the fact that it sucked hard outside. Thank you for decreasing my injury FOMO winter, you finally did one thing right!
3. Less laundry to do
Especially in the winter months when the amount of gear required to run outside can be staggering, it’s been nice to be going through workout clothes less regularly, resulting in a less heaping basket of stinky laundry that fills less quickly. When I did do something physical, at least for most of February and March, I was heading inside to the gym. Just a tank top and shorts were all I needed, compared to outdoor winter running where I typically look like this:
So I guess I’m saying this was nice because I could do less laundry less often and be lazier. Okay, this one is kind of lame but whatever, its something.
4. Grocery bills are less expensive
Way less physical activity equated to an appetite that plummeted, and I straight up have just not been eating as much. I also shifted from just grabbing high calorie food to replace the huge amount of energy I was burning to refocusing on lots of veggies and nutrient dense food. Not running 8-10 hours a week also left me with more time to thoughtfully grocery shop and make lunches at home. Don’t worry, I still kept a healthy helping of vitamins P and D (Pizza and Donuts) in there for good measure, but my body feels much less like a bottomless pit.
5. Time to become a functional member of society again
Within the first two weeks I was physically useless, I knocked off several things that I had been procrastinating (for no reason) doing on my life admin to do list for months. Got a haircut, got an oil change, put a chunk of money on my RRSPs, replaced my parks pass for my car, bought a day planner to further get my shit together. Stuff that is pretty easy but always gets sidelined when I prioritize running.
6. Mental capacity to focus on other things
I think we severely underestimate how much mental bandwidth is taken up when we are training hard and pursuing athletic goals, even if it is “for fun”. I, personally, obsess and daydream about it a lot and even when I’m not actively thinking about it, I think that drive and passion is still going on in the background and taking up our energy and focus. I’m not saying I haven’t thought about these things while I haven’t been able to run, but I’m a lot more present about what I can do here and now.
7. Actually using the gym membership you bought
I usually yoga and climb at least once a week each so I bought a year membership to the gym instead of the discount day passes I was getting from work. In order to make the purchase worth it I needed to actually use the gym facilities three times a week which was nottttt really happening pre-injury. Lately I’ve been going 6+ times per week to cycle, do some mobility and strength training and keep up with yoga classes, so my buyer’s remorse has been silenced! I’ve even added an ass-kicking spin class to the mix which has shown me new levels of sweatiness I didn’t even know existed. I hate to admit it, but maybe it hasn’t been the worst thing in the world to shake things up.
8. Friday nights are lit again
With a 3-4 hour long run usually looming most weekend mornings, I’m not usually one to have a big Friday night, and my idea of a solid weekend night is usually some fraction of a bottle of wine on the couch with a good movie, and early to bed. I usually have some kind of lame excuse to not go out, but not really having any reason to get up early the last several weeks has given me a “f*ck it why not” mindset. I’ve had some late nights out that I normally wouldn’t go for which have resulted in some hilarious stories and/or video footage *cough cough SARAH*. I don’t really want to make a habit of being a hungover pile of garbage on Saturday mornings but it has felt nice to just let loose a bit lately and pretend I’m 5-10 years younger than I am for like, a minute.
9. You can sit back with a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show
I write this from a little coffee shop downtown Boston, where my buddies Karl and Alex (Alex is a fellow IPOS) will meet up with me later today. We were all meant to run Boston on Monday, but only Karl remains unscathed. I’m disappointed to not be running, but I’m so glad to have came and actually PUMPED to be able to watch this thing go down and support Karl alongside my blonde badass buddy Alex. I’m treating this trip as a recon mission for when I eventually make it back here….
Next weekend I’m tagging along with a hoard of Canmorites to watch the crew take on the Yakima 50km and 25km trail races. I typically race A LOT and I think I owe a turn (or ten) on the crew-and-support side of things. I can still drink beer and eat like I ran 50km even if I don’t run the 50km, and I get to watch how the races unfold, so this seems like a sweet deal to me. EDIT: This turned out to be one of the BEST WEEKS EVER, despite not even running.
10. The unexciting becomes exciting again
Whether it was being able to walk from my apartment to downtown Banff without pain, or standing on my injured leg while I put pants on without holding on to something, every little step of progress I’ve made has felt very exciting. When I realized I could hop on the injured leg (which took over 6 weeks to be able to do) I made everyone look at me and watch as I anticlimactically and awkwardly hopped and wobbled back down. Thanks to anyone and everyone that has humored me with “wow that’s exciting!” remarks over the last several weeks. From being able to shuffle 1 minute, to managing a hike to the Lady Mac helipad earlier this week, I really have a restored gratitude for everything my body can do and I feel bad for all the times I didn’t appreciate it before.
So that’s it. I’m sure there’s some other good stuff I’ll realize later, but this seems like a good start. Sure, not running is super lame, but if you can’t do anything about it, you might as well embrace it and appreciate that silver lining.
This one time I went running 