"Good Luck on Stone River Young Man"

Those were the words the gentleman in his 60's said as I passed by on the "Statue to Statue" 15k course in Mt. Brook, Alabama. Those words would have been an encouragement to most, but to me it sounded more like "Beware the Ides of March".

I had heard from my running buddy, Jeremiah, that the course was hilly but I was a little surprised when I picked up my packet on Friday and found that it was billed as the "Toughest 15k in the South". I quickly dismissed the phrase as marketing hype and decided that I'd just start the run the next morning at a my sustainable pace of about 9 minutes a mile.

Friday night I was concerned about many things including eating right, getting enough sleep, my wife who was supposed to run but was sick, getting up on time, and my injuries. I had 2 injuries that concerned me: a groin pull that at times prevented me from lifting my left leg very high and my right knee which was sometimes in enough pain to keep me from running at all. Nevertheless, I set my goal to run it in something under 90 minutes.

Saturday morning came and I was up on time and feeling pretty good, but I wouldn't really know how good I felt until I tested the knee when I was warming up. The warmup up went ok. There was some pain in my knee but I figured it would be self-numbing as I got started with the race.

I don't know if it was adrenaline or not, but when the race started I was running without stress at an 8.25 minute pace for the first 3 miles. I know now from looking at the elevation chart on www.mapmyrun.com that I was going gently downhill for a lot of that part of the race.

Mile number 4 was good and flat, but I could tell that my pace was beginning to fade. It was during the 5th mile that the hills began and it was at about 5.3 miles that I encountered the wisdom runner who said "Good luck on Stone River Young Man".

Then it happened. We turned the corner off Shiloh Drive on to Stone River and there it was before me: the never ending hill. For the next 2 miles we climbed and climbed. Nearly 400 feet. Not a lot for you big mountain guys, but it was a lot for this Southerner who'd never run more than 6 miles at any one time. About 2/3 of the way up something funny happened: I ran out of juice. The only thing that kept me going was my buddy, Jeremiah's words, "Just don't stop. Whatever you do, just don't stop." So I kept running, but I was going so slow that a tall guy walking went right past me. I had to laugh a little inside about how that picture must have looked.

Well, I made it to the top of Stone River without stopping, but unfortunately for me the roughest part was ahead. You see, I have this problem with my right ankle collapsing to the inside when it is overworked and from about 7.8 miles to 9.0 the Statue to Statue course descends about 500 feet and that puts a lot of extra stress on your legs. All that time my ankle was collapsing, collapsing, and collapsing with every step. It wasn't terribly painful at the time, but I knew I would pay later because of the damage I was doing.

To add insult to injury there is a 100+ foot climb in the last 0.3 of the race, but I managed to meet my goal and finish in 89 minutes and some seconds. It was bar-b-que time! But the worst was yet to come...

Running Downhill

You can find all types of advice about how to run downhill and I say listen to it all. Listen to it all, and then listen to your body. We are all quite unique and our bodies are built to handle physical challenges in different ways. If we take all of the rational reasons and other people's experiences and feed them to our intuition, our bodies will tell us what's best for us and why. In regard to running downhill on road surfaces, here's what I've found works for me: 1) Lean forward slightly. Looking down about 4 or 5 feet in front of me helps me with this. I used to lean back and resist the hill, but this is too slow and why work your legs by breaking when you don't have to. 2) Take medium strides with little foot lift. The ground is declining, so too much foot lift will result in excess stress on your knees and ankles. 3) Let gravity do it's thing. Don't be afraid to go faster than normal. I'll see you further on up the road.

President's Challenge

If you find that sticking with your physical activity program is a motivational challenge like I do, here's a site that you may like: https://www.presidentschallenge.org/home_adults.aspx We're doing the Presidential Champions program together as a family and sometimes it's the only thing that motivates me to get outside and do something. I especially like the way it lets me log my activities and get points for almost every physical activity you can think of. I'll meet you further on up the road. Jim Hill

Running Again (without knee pain)

I'm a runner again. Not a big time runner; just about 15 miles a week over 3 days. I tried running when I was a lot heavier, but it didn't work for me because of my knees. I was running some 5k races and I was really bad. The first race I ran in I finished next to last... that's if you don't count the nurse. The guy running behind me was about 90 and he was running with his geriatric nurse. As I said, I had to stop running because of my knees. They started hurting so much that after the last race I literally had to crawl across the floor when I got home. The doctor said that it was bursitis. It's a repetitive motion injury where these little sacs of fluid called bursae get irritated. I attributed those injuries to my weight and I quit running until I could take off some weight. Well here I am, 4 years later and 50 pounds lighter and I'm running again. Things are going well. I'm training for a 15k run in Birmingham, AL called the ("Statue to Statue"). I still have to be careful with my knees and recently I learned that I need fish oil because of what it does for my joints. I went without it for a couple of weeks and boy did I miss it. All the popping and cracking and pain in my knees let me know that if I'm going to run, I'm going to have to take in the right nutrients. Here's a link to an article from HealthLine about some more benefits of fish oil: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/13-benefits-of-fish-oil#section15. We'll see you further on up the road.