As much as I hate to admit it, multiple sclerosis had me running scared.
In the weeks leading up to the Alma Highland Festival held over Memorial Day weekend I was soooo afraid of falling. I guess the “Friday Night Incident on Mission Street” in late March had cut me deeper than the incident-instigated five-stitch gash on my forehead.
On that infamous Friday night, it was just supposed to be an easy training run. Nice weather. New running shoes. Bruce Springsteen’s recent release on my iPod. A different route celebrating spring’s return.
Less than two miles into my run I ventured beyond the friendly confines of the Central Michigan University campus and onto the sidewalks and parking lots along Mount Pleasant’s busy Mission Street. Trucks and cars congested the street’s four lanes. People on their way home from work. Families on their way out to dinner. Friends on their way out for the night.
I still hope nobody saw me as I ran past Sherwin Williams in the strip mall across from Walgreen’s. My left foot clipped the crack where the parking lot met the sidewalk.
It’s bizarre to say it happened so quickly I had no time to react, yet at the same time I remember thinking countless thoughts during this split second, “You gotta be kidding me. I clipped the sidewalk and I’m gonna fall. I sure hope this doesn’t hurt. Man, there’s a lot of traffic and how graceful do I look? Don’t flail, Dan. Fall. But for God’s sake don’t flail. It’ll look so uncool.”
BAM! My head, throttled by the momentum of my modest pace, smacked into the pavement. Truly face first. Lying prostrate on the cold concrete I remember staring at a loose stone as the sting from the fall set into my skin and consciousness. I then shot up as quickly as I fell. “Nothing to see here, folks. I’m OK,” I thought as dime-sized drops of blood splashed onto the sidewalk and my new shoes. I turned off my iPod. Not now, Bruce. I think I hurt myself.
It’s as though my forehead, left shoulder and left pinky broke my fall and protected my legs, which was good because it ended up being a really long walk home. I’m grateful I was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt that night to camouflage the crimson mess I continually wiped off my forehead. One college student stopped me to see if I was OK. “Does it look as bad as I think it does,” I asked him as he offered to call me a cab to get me home and to the emergency room. I appreciated his offer, but all I wanted was to get home to Jennifer. She’d make everything better.
Finally. Home. Jennifer all but started crying at the shock of it all. So did I. We spent nearly four hours at the ER, where medical professionals stitched my head, wrapped my knuckles and X-rayed my poor left pinky. They said it was fine, but I still think I broke it.
Certainly this wasn’t the first time I had fallen while running, but it was the first time in a long time it had happened. Was it my MS? After all, because of MS, as I get tired my left side gets a little weaker and I start dragging my left foot. This is why the last thing Jennifer always tells me before I go running is, “Pick up your feet.”
I was out running just three days after I fell. I seemed to be moving quite well. That is, until I entered my first 5K race of the season. It was hosted by the CMU Physical Therapy Student Organization and coincidentally benefitted the National MS Society. I fell in the middle of the race. Again, my left foot clipped a raised crack in the sidewalk. Even though I scuffed my knuckles in the fall, I protected my head and finished the race in an OK time.
Two falls in less than a month. Was my MS getting worse? Was it time to back off on running?
At the end of the race Jennifer glared at my scuffed knuckles and declared, “‘You need to get rid of those shoes. I’m going to buy you some different ones this afternoon. It’s not the MS. It’s those damn shoes!” Excellent point, Detective Digmann. In the six times I had worn these new shoes, this marked the second time that I fell. So we went to Runners and bought some new shoes.
And while I hoped the newer new shoes would be my saving grace, my fear of falling had me running scared. Case in point: Two weeks later in my second 5K of the season – Central Michigan Community Hospital’s Run-a-Trail – I finished in 26:44, more than two minutes slower than my 24:06 mark in the same race just a year ago.
I just couldn’t shake the fear. Training runs. Running hills. Speed training. I didn’t want to fall. But I was starting to feel some pressure. The Highland Festival was a mere three weeks away and it was at the festival’s 5K race last year that I ran my overall personal record of 23:19. Somebody help me!
The night before the race, I shared my fears with Jennifer. and through our conversation she helped me to realize three things:
• The first was that I had every reason to be scared
• The second was that if I held back in my running so I wouldn’t fall, that’s precisely why I would fall
So I went out the next morning and I ran hard, never once thinking about falling despite the steady rain and wet course. I finished in 24:41; placing seventh out of 15 in my age group. I needed that.
Oh yeah, and the third thing I realized the night before the race? I needed to remember and embrace the Japanese Proverb that had helped me through the earliest months of my life with MS:
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”