The running dream is over

Well, today wasn’t exactly a good day. I’ve been on a running hiatus after an injury suffered while training for my first marathon in 2024. After a year off, gaining weight, losing weight, and easing in to pilates to work on my strength, I booked in to see my physio and with the hopse of working towards running again.

Long story short, I’m not running again.

But let’s rewind.

How did I get here

In 2009, while playing netball, I tore my right ACL and damaged my meniscus.

Fun fact – the first doctor I saw ignored my knee, told me to take shark fin oil and lose some weight. If you’re thinking “what the actual f**k” right now, well, yeah, me too. Turns out other people weren’t impressed either, because I found out later he had fronted the medical board for exactly the same thing, and was still doing it when I saw him. I ended up seeing a sports doctor who, after simply moving my leg in one direction, declared I’d torn my ACL and sent me for scans.

I got the surgery, did the rehab, and never played netball again.

I did, however, discover a love of running many years later.

A friend and I used to have a saying whenever we were feeling particularly emotional about something. We would simply message each other “RUN!”. Simple, but effective. Running got me through some big times in my life, when all I wanted to do was lay in bed and cry, I got up and went for a run instead.

Some running highlights for me:

• Completed countless 5k Park Runs
• Participated in multiple Sydney City to Surf 14km races
• Entered the Bridge to Brisbane multiple times (once with a screwed hip that felt like every step was tearing my hip apart)
• Noosa Runway Bay 10k
• Sunshine Coast festival 10k
• River Run 100 Half Marathon Event – my longest single event run to date, with my husband and son at the finish line to cheer me on
• A 10k in Arkansas, US – one of my favourite, slowest events ever (we wore Buc-ee’s beaver onesies the whole race)
• A hell of a lot of online virtual events, the most exhausting one clocking in 24km a day for 10 days straight
• and a lot more that I’ve forgotten

The point being, is that I ran a lot and enjoyed live events, even if I was pretty darn slow. It wasn’t about the speed, it was about being part of it.

Training for a marathon

Through my online running activities, I became friends with some incredible women based in the US. After years of chatting, we decided we would all do a full marathon together, on a trip called “Tour De Fatty”.

I started training in September 2023, and by January 2024, I was clocking in long runs of 21-23km each weekend.

After one long run, my knee was painful. Very, very painful. There was swelling, and it hurt to walk. I consulted a physio, and after a few weeks of treatment and not making a lot of progress, it was off to the GP and some scans.

An MRI confirmed the worst – I had moderate arthritis in my knee, and high-grade cartilage loss. However, only the physio listened to me when I explained the pain wasn’t in my knee. The doctors all kept focusing on the knee itself. My pain was below it, to the side. I was referred to a surgeon who explained that I would need a knee replacement; however, due to my ag,e he wouldn’t be recommending it.

Then the death knell sounded.

Give up running. You will never run again.
– Surgeon whose name I forget because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself

He ordered a cortisone shot into my knee, which cleared up the issue within days. Turns out that I just had bad bursitis.

My physio cleared me to still head to the US, but I had to drop to the 10km event, and I had to walk it. Slowly, he said. Take it easy.

Which, I did…in a Buc-ee’s onesie with my friends. And we took it slowly as requested, casually strolling in with mere seconds to spare (we didn’t realise at the time, and burst out laughing when we realised). We may not have been fast, but we sure did it in style!

After that, I barely walked and fell into a slump.

Foiling the comeback tour

This year, I snapped out of the funk. I got on my comeback tour. I saw a doctor, worked on my weight and nutrition, and started strength training. My theory was that if I weighed less, and that I was stronger, that maybe I could get back to it.

A few weeks ago, I realised that I wasn’t far from the weight goal. It was time to book in with the physio.

Today was that day.

Essentially, I have two options:

• Go back to running, and fast-track my route to a knee replacement. Which I’m unlikely to get, because of my age and the fact that surgeons don’t like having to “redo” knee replacements, which I would need if I got it early. So I would wreck my knee, have a terrible quality of life trying to walk and climb stairs every day, while arguing with a surgeon to give me a new knee. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the outdoors with my husband and son, and things would suck pretty much.
  
  OR
  
• I could give up running, keep “kicking the can down the road” on how long until the knee surgery, focus on strengthening my legs to support my knee every day, and find a new, low-impact sport to take up instead. The suggestions were cycling or swimming.

In my simple way of explaining, when I had the surgery, they had also had to trim the meniscus. That meant my knee was off balance, and with all the running I had been doing, it was just slowly but surely eating it all away. It was always going to happen, it was just a matter of when.

The physio explained that had they scanned my knee before the bursitis, it would likely have looked the same as it does today. Functionally, my knee hasn’t changed, which is a good thing in a way I suppose. It means I’m able to live pain-free right now….if I don’t aggravate it.

My physio also detected that my right quad muscle has deteriorated again and is considerably smaller than my left. That’s an issue that I dealt with after my ACL surgery, and I’m not sure why it’s happened again, but I suppose at least I’m aware of it. In addition, my knee cap shifts sideways.

So…there’s a lot of work to do, and a hard decision to be made.

Where to from here

Right now I’m processing. It sounds a bit silly to be so devastated about it, but I still had so many goals. I wanted to get faster. I wanted to crack the full marathon. I wanted to do an event with my son.

I just wanted to run.

When I run, it’s my happy place. My brain stops thinking so much, and I feel at peace. The runners’ high from a good run, the feeling of being puffed, of having pushed yourself. The feeling of an easy run, where you’re just cruising and it doesn’t feel hard at all.

I’m struggling to imagine this same feeling from something else.

It’s too early to discount swimming and cycling, and right now I feel more likely to pick on the things don’t like about it, than what I do. But I know that swimming gives me that breathless feeling I crave, and cycling gives me the “out and about” feelings, particularly when cycling early morning and watching the sun rise over the coastline. On the flip side, when I swim, my eyes hurt from feeling like they’ve not focused properly, and it’s a hard sport to enjoy during winter. When I cycle, I just don’t feel safe on the roads anymore with the number of people getting hit by cars.

So…what do I do? Do I resign myself to a life of walking the dog and on the treadmill? Do I get an indoor bike?

If I look at the positive angle, it means that my friends permanently have someone who would be happy to crew for them at events. I could get back to volunteering at Park Run and just live through everyone else. I can continue to follow all the running legends online that inspire me.

For now, I’m going to allow myself a couple of days to just process. I’m not going to do anything dramatic like sell my treadmill (trust me, it’s already crossed my mind). I’m going to enjoy walking our dog every morning, and enjoy the fresh air, breathing, and the feeling of movement.

I’ll continue to do the strength work plan I’ve been set, and the pilates work I’ve grown to love. I’ll take the glucosamine with chondroitin every morning, with a side of fish oil. I’ll keep losing weight to take pressure off my knees. And every day I will consider myself very, very lucky to still have a functional body that can take me places.

When one door closes, another one opens.

I hate the cliche, but tonight it’s ringing more true than ever.