Argh!

I guess the name of this blog has turned out to be sort of appropriate.  Turns out I do have glass legs.

I had been running with pain for pretty much the entire season.  Typically the pain would be in the front of the hip, right around the top of my left thigh, and it would wander from there to the left side of my hip, and sometimes it would move to the inside of my thigh/groin.  Sometimes it would hurt as soon as I started running, go away during the run after a mile or so, and then return after I stopped.  In some cases, the pain was so bad that I would limp later that day and continue walking with a limp the day after.  Since it would typically get better in a day or so, I would take a couple of days off and then continue running.

Finally, it got bad enough that decided to go see a doctor.

I went to see Dr. Elias Kasspidis at Riverside Orthopedics & Sports Medicine on April 25th.  I had an x-ray which was negative, and he suggested that it could have been spinal since one of my discs was thinner than the others, or I had a tear.  He instructed me to stop running and prescribed a 6 day course of prednisone(?) and if it didn't feel better then I would go in for an MRI.

I took the prescribed course of medicine, felt better enough to race a couple of times (NYRR Race as One 4M and NYRR UAE Healthy Kidney 10k.  After the 10k, it hurt enough that I called Dr. Kassapidis and he authorized an MRI.

Went in for an MRI on the morning of the 25th.  I actually felt okay that day...I had felt okay enough to run on the Wednesday before where we were doing 3 lower loops of CP (1 mile at race pace, the rest .7 mile of the loop at an easy jog).  I was running around 7:30min/miles and felt okay, but not great, and stopped after 2 loops just as a precaution.

Apparently, Dr. Kassapidis got the MRI results back very quickly and left me a message on my cell and at home on Friday afternoon.  For whatever reason, I didn't see the call and didn't check my voicemail on my cell (and we almost never check our voicemail at home).  Stupidly, I did a tempo brick on Saturday, where I did 3 loops of CP on the bike, rode home, changed and headed out to do a 20 minute run in CP.  I was planning to go slow and easy for one lower loop of CP.  I was running at about 9:30min/mile which felt incredibly slow, but I felt good enough to go for one more loop.  Ended up limping a little later that day, but felt good enough the next day to hop back on the bike which didn't really aggravate it.

So last night, I was in a cab ride home and took the opportunity to check emails and voicemails, and finally heard the voicemail from Dr. Kassapidis who said that the MRI showed that I had a stress fracture and if it hurt when I walked, I needed to go to the ER or pharmacy and get crutches, or if it only hurt when I ran, I needed to stop running.  He also said that these things typically heal themselves and that I'd have an MRI 4-5 weeks from now  Needless to say, I was really upset and depressed and had a large glass of scotch when I got home (and a large brownie, not to be a total chick about it).

I have a call into Dr. Kassapidis this morning, and I'm waiting to hear back from him as to how bad it is exactly, and whether I can still swim and/or bike.  I'm trying hard not to be totally depressed, but it's pretty clear that I won't be doing the LI Gold Coast Sprint, and probably not the NYC Tri.  Sucks.

Stay tuned.