This is the 50th edition of the newsletter. Whether you’ve been reading a week or have been here from the start, I appreciate your readership!
Given that this newsletter is about doing the hard work of dealing with – well, life – and doing it in a way that’s healthier than the cultural zeitgeist shows men, it’s probably fitting that I’m sharing some bad personal news about my 2026 running goal.
To recap: One of the pillars of this newsletter is Challenge. Which is to embrace difficulty as a path toward growth. That means physically and emotionally. So, after two lost running seasons due to injury, I decided my physical challenge this summer would be to find out how fast I can run a mile without getting hurt.
And if you’ve been following, you know I’ve been pretty happy with my progress. Here’s Tuesday’s workout: 12 x 200m repeats with 200m recovery jog/walks in between.
As you can see, they started at about 38 seconds per 200, or 5:06 minutes/mile pace. and by the last one I had sped up to just over 35 seconds, or 4:43/mile pace. These are speeds I haven’t touched since 2006, having focused on marathons and ultra-marathons since then.
Well I haven’t run a step since that workout.
I had an Achilles tendon flare up in my right leg that was so painful, I could barely walk. I have some history there, that I’ll share briefly: Around 20 years ago I got pneumonia. In the urgent care, the doctor gave me an antibiotic called Levaquin. It cleared up the infection, but it caused another problem that doctors have known about since 1983 that I was unaware of until a few weeks later: Achilles tendinopathy or tendon rupture.
Around 2006 was when I was hitting my peak marathon times, having run 2:48.29 and multiple sub-three-hour marathons. But a few weeks after pneumonia I was slowly ramping up my mileage again and my right Achilles broke down. It didn’t fully rupture, but it’s been messed up for 20 years. This gets exposed if I load it up too much.
“Load” in this case either means too much or too fast.
And I guess 200m repeats at under 5:00/mile pace is too fast these days.
Tuesday night, I had quite an emotional reaction to not being able to walk without pain. I presumed my mile race, planned for July, was over. I was feeling very low.
I’ve done a ton of work on myself, so I was able to talk about it with my familiy from a place of internal compassion and kindness, whereas the Old Me years ago would have been angry and bitter.
Luckily I awoke Wednesday to the ankle being…well, I could tell it’s still messed up but it wasn’t stopping me from walking. I’ve been sleeping with a Strassburg Sock and digging out an old Achilles strap that I may use for the next time I attempt to run.
Sleeping in the Strassburg Sock and wearing the Cho-Pat (descriptions in alt text) have helped me in the past, so we’ll see.
I was supposed to run 6 X 400m this morning, but I have decided to give my leg one more day before I see what happens when I load it up again.
This mile attempt has been very important to me. I’ve written about why, and how interesting it’s been to run faster than I have in a very long time. Here’s what I’m doing about this so that I don’t fall into the trap of feeling like a victim or spiraling into anger or depression:
First, I’m treating the injury like nothing more than information. My goal was: find out how fast I can run a mile without getting injured. Well, I think I’ve found out how fast I can TRAIN until I do get injured. I have’t raced the mile – yet.
Second, I’m using that information to reassess my goal, not abandon it. My goal race is one of the weekly all-comers track meets that have already started taking place this year. So I have options. I could run one sooner than my target date even though I’m not fully trained, or I could run one later and see if I can gain more fitness w/o rupturing the Achilles. I’m going to try my 6 x 400 workout tomorrow morning to see how my Achilles responds and then use that information to help me decide what to do.
I am capable of at least a 5:30 mile, I know that. And I’ll confess I have dropped my training results into AI to ask it’s opinion. ChatGPT thinks sub-5 is on the table, although not highly likely. I don’t believe it. I think my best race would be 5:20, or maybe 5:15 on a good day.
I’m not a Pollyanna. This injury isn’t a “blessing.” But it IS an opportunity to do the work on myself that I, and a lot of men, don’t do. We get angry. We lash out. We don’t show ourselves or anyone else any compassion. We allow a toxic, “suck it up buttercup” mentality to push us to places where we hurt ourselves (physically and emotionally).
And believe me, there’s a big part of me that wants to ask my doctor for a cortisone injection (which could do more damage), so I can power through one more month and go crush a race and bask in my effort. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.
I think I’m managing the load on my Achilles to find out what I CAN do and I’ll assess after tomorrow’s workout. I am considering this “load management.”
What do you think? Am I deluding myself into a toxic place, or am I being reasonable? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.
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