High Drama.

Uh-Oh...

In what should have been an improvement in my training over last year, the unthinkable started to take hold. The injury I had sustained from my panic of not having a long run in me had brought on the urge to run and run long. Unfortunately for me, it was a case of the runner who had no stop sign ahead. And who fell over the cliff of health and into a pit of disastrous doom. Take a look below at all of the logs entered in between October 15th and Saturday, November 4 (exactly 1 day before the race)....


So, for the next three days, I decided not to run. Unfortunately, I could still feel major discomfort in my calves. Especially the right one. I was panicking because I had not trained much now in a few weeks.

Early Thursday morning, I had to fly to California for a site survey on Friday. I got to my Holiday Express fairly early in the day and had some free time, so I decided to give it a real college try in doing a slow distance run around my area.

As you can see, the results were not good at all...
With little time left, I was forced to heal. This meant zero running. I could have trained on the elliptical, but why chance it any more, right?

So, and for 9 days, I did not run. In fact, I barely even moved out of my seat at work. I was extremely nervous about all of this, and now was desperate to get better in time for my 2nd NYC Marathon in my "2nd life".

But it was to no avail you see. 9 days off, and 12 of the last 13, and still there was no improvement.

How was I going to be able to run? My calf was throbbing. Nearly a year of training, and racing, all for nothing. And all of it to go down the drain for something that had happened less than two weeks earlier. As people get older, it takes longer to recover from injury. Or so, it's been said.

After the attempted run that you see above, I was so miserable that I wanted to cry. The best was to drown out my sad state of affairs was to drive, and drive far. I took Ileana to the wine country. In New York, the best place for this is on the North Fork section of Long Island. It's no Napa Valley for sure, but there were plenty of wine tasting places along the way. Enough to dullen my senses, not enough to be unable to drive, but just so that the edge from the excruciating pain of knowing I was not going to be able to run in this year's race would be temporarily forgotten.

The next day, I tried to make an appointment today to see the doctor, but they were all booked up....Until November 15th!

The next morning, Tuesday, the pain was still there.... I can't believe this!

At this point, I called back and DEMANDED to see someone citing my unfortunate set of circumstances. Fortunately for me, they mentioned that someone had cancelled, and could see me immediately. So, I raced (in my car obviously) over to see him. Dr. Parisi checked me out and as you can see below. He stated the all-too-painful-truth; to not run for fear of further worsening my injury.

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Wednesday, November 1. The Deadline.

I had until close of business today to make the online decision to postpone my race until next year. Although I had gotten a CAT Scan done yesterday, there was no guarantee of getting my results before the window of opportunity to cancel online had come......

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

.....and gone!

Now if I had wanted to cancel, I would have to go in person to the Javitz center to do so.

Thursday, turned out to be a brighter day however as my results came back negative...

Still, my doc told me that I still should not run in the race, if it still hurt. I begged him for a shot of cortisone to be slammed right into my calf. Instead, he gave me a prescription for Naproxyn. To tell you the truth, my leg was killing me. Something told me that perhaps that reading was inconclusive at best, if not outright wrong. I definitely tore something. Perhaps it was minute, but baby did it hurt! Just walking on it for 5 minutes was enough to break me out into a James-Brown-like cold sweat. Before I left, the doc told me that there are those 'heroes' out there, those people, who somehow do incredible things, when put to the test.

And with those final words had asked me to let him know if I decided to go through with it or not.

Saturday, November 3. 1 day to go. Last Chance To Cancel.

"It's Now or Never" Elvis once belted out.

And that's exactly where I was at this point of my 2006 NYC Marathon.

Bail.......or............Sail?

Being at the Javitz and seeing everyone there was just too much. I even saw Steve & Coleman, both from my office out there too.

Too much invested. Too much to let this overcome me. How could I possibly wake up to see the running of a race on television that I had instead prepared for almost a year to be participating in.

If I had to carry the whole bottle of Naproxyn with me on my run, so be it!!!!!