鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 luck or just taking it kind of easy, but I鈥檝e been able to run a bunch of ultramarathons without ever having any sort of serious injury.鈥
鈥擬e, December 2021
鈥淎ll I did was bend over to help my dog into the car, and when I stood up, it was like a lightning bolt hit me right in my lower back.鈥
鈥擬e, talking to a doctor in the emergency room, February 2022
In high school, during what I remember was a phase when we were fairly obsessed with the Doors and Jim Morrison and with procuring beer or liquor despite not being of legal age to buy it, a friend of mine used to say, 鈥淟ive fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse.鈥
Which is definitely one of those dumb things you say when you鈥檙e 16 and feel like you鈥檙e kind of invincible but don鈥檛 realize that feeling is actually naivete. And if you鈥檙e lucky, you will actually not die young but will survive those years and make it a couple more decades and then refer to those years as 鈥渨hen I was young and dumb.鈥
I had a back spasm a few weeks ago doing something very nonheroic and not at all dangerous. My dog, who is not so young himself, needs a little help getting into the back of my car, so I bent over to help him by picking up his back end and lifting it into the car. As I stood back up, I felt a stabbing pain right where my lower back joins the anatomical region known as 鈥渢he butt.鈥 I walked a few halting steps in circles around our driveway, while releasing a stream of expletives (e.g., 鈥淔uck!鈥).
I immediately thought: I have done something like this before, same general area, painful, but not debilitating, and it takes a few days to loosen up. I have to stand up from a chair in slow stages for a couple days, but it eventually goes away, and I go back to my normal life.
This time felt a little different though. I don鈥檛 know, maybe 40 percent more uncomfortable? I carefully folded myself into the passenger seat and took the dog for a slow walk, came home later, and tried to massage the spot with a lacrosse ball, which did nothing. After an hour or so of trying to sleep in any position without pain shooting through my back and leg, I asked my wife, Hilary, if she would mind maybe taking me to the emergency room, if it wasn鈥檛 too much trouble?
The ER doctor asked me to rate my pain level, on a scale of one to ten, and I thought about it. I know it鈥檚 just a routine question they ask to figure out how to help you deal with the pain, but everybody has different tolerances. I have been lucky in that I haven鈥檛 had a lot of pain that wasn鈥檛 self-inflicted (in the 鈥淭ype 2 Fun鈥 way)鈥攏o car accidents, no medical problems, no chronic pain or discomfort. I figure ten on the pain scale means something like you鈥檙e ready to die because it hurts so much. A nine pain rating, then, to me, is maxing out, right at the edge, like you鈥檙e willing to continue, but barely鈥攑robably the upper limit of the human capacity to withstand pain. I don鈥檛 think I was there. The worst pain I鈥檝e had in the past decade or so was during a 100-mile ultramarathon, in which pain from blisters in my feet started shooting up my legs for the last 30 miles鈥攖hat plus indigestion plus the pain of moving on my feet for 30-plus hours while being awake for 40 hours straight. But in a situation like that, you choose to keep going every time you take a step forward, and to me, if it鈥檚 a choice, it鈥檚 unfair (and tone-deaf) to categorize it with the unchosen suffering that humans have endured. Plus I paid someone to let me do it to myself, and I could literally lie down on the side of the trail if it was really that bad. Ultrarunning pain, definitely not a nine, more like seven. So, this back pain, that I hadn鈥檛 chosen:
鈥淚 would say it鈥檚 an eight.鈥
One thing I could have said in response to injuring myself: 鈥淕etting old sucks.鈥 And sure, I鈥檓 older than I was, and my body is less elastic than it was, say, ten or 15 years ago. But as people older than I am would tell me, I鈥檓 not that old. And if I鈥檓 honest with myself, it鈥檚 not because I鈥檓 old鈥攊t鈥檚 because I鈥檓 lazy. Like everyone on earth, I like to do things I like to do, and I avoid doing things I don鈥檛 like to do. Like stretching.
When I fill out the 鈥渂io鈥 section of anything, I usually write the word 鈥渞unner鈥 or sometimes 鈥渦ltrarunner,鈥 in the tradition of sharing things about yourself that you鈥檙e proud of or passionate about, even if, percentage-wise, they don鈥檛 take up the majority of your waking hours. If I was honest, I鈥檇 say something like 鈥淚 sit on my ass a lot and tap on keyboards and draw with an Apple pencil, and then I try to balance that out by running for several hours every week.鈥
Hard work, I鈥檇 like to think, adds up. Well, as it turns out, all that ass-sitting and not stretching also adds up, and eventually you reap the rewards. What I had, as Paul the physical therapist told me, was likely a herniated disc. As he put it, the jelly is squeezing out of the donut between my L4 and L5 vertebrae, which is causing the pain, as well as numbness in my knee. And I won鈥檛 be running again for several weeks.
All this is kind of a bummer. But I am also somewhat in awe of the body鈥檚 ability to basically mutiny against poor working conditions for the past four-plus decades, as one body part goes on strike and jams up the entire assembly line.
As I started to get little bit of mobility back, I drew this chart, a play on the 鈥渓ive fast, die young鈥 saying ():
When I put it on Instagram, many people commented about their own experiences with humbling injuries that surprised them:
As much as I fancy myself some sort of amateur athlete, when I get immobilized by a very ridiculous injury, I have to admit: I basically do one quasi-athletic thing, which is keep moving on trails for hours at a time. If I attempted an American Ninja Warrior course, I would probably last less than three seconds. I鈥檓 not exactly Cirque de Soleil material at this point, and even rec league basketball might be a bit dangerous. When this is all over, though, I would like to become A Guy Who Can Bend Over and Pick Things Up Without Risking a Trip to the ER. And some trail running might be nice, too, if that鈥檚 not too much to ask.