Diagnosis: Quadricep Muscle Tear
Treatment: Cessation or decreased running x8 weeks. Stretching, leg press, squats, leg extensions. Biking or elliptical. Naproxen/500mg bid.
Did you read 8 weeks? I swear that said 8, and it couldn't have been 8. I know it also said decreased running, but it's already pretty darn decreased to 15 to 20 miles a week, so that's not the answer.
No surgery, it will repair itself, and I'm still blessed. Not in a cast and I can cross-train. I'm just a moron for not taking 8 weeks off during this nasty winter, instead of waiting until a gorgeous spring.
What the results tell me are three things. Most runners know their body pretty well. I had been telling doctors it was a muscle issue, not a tendon or knee issue, but the tendons and knee seem to be what doctors focused on. And the treatment that I had planned back in November, (as I wrote in my last post), of time off running, cross-training, and then a return to light running, was right on.
The second thing it tells me is that I'm an impatient baby and that my time frame for this was not long enough. I certainly never gave it 8 weeks. As for time off now, I'm still in the deliberation stage, but I've told myself 4 weeks off, then 2 weeks at 5 miles a week, and then 2 weeks at 10 miles a week, and then 8 weeks will be up and I will increase from there. This still fits doctor's orders of decreased running, but I don't know if I should trust myself since it was my best thinking that got me here.
Third thing it tells me is that I ran 3 marathons on a quadricep muscle tear.
I have two half-marathons to run in 2014 for Runwell, or better yet, a full marathon with a long rest in the middle, and I still will do so, but I am going to pull out of the Dexter Ann Arbor on June 1st, and do Woodstock in September and then Detroit in October.
My last words for the doctor was that the sign up for the Disney Marathon for January 2015 was in five days. My whole family is excited to go to this signature event. "Sign up!" he said, "even if you're not running until June, that gives you plenty of time."
Those words I heard loud and clear and there will be no wavering.
