4 Weeks and Counting...

Once again, here’s a long overdue update to my web log. It has recently been brought to my attention that there are actually people out there who read this other than my mom and sister so my New Year’s resolution is to update this at least once every two weeks. That’s right, beat the crowds and order your free 26-issue, 1-year subscription right now. I hardly know where to start, but I’ll begin where things went wrong. On Monday, November 20, I was at the NCAA national meet in Terre Haute, IN with the two Iowa State athletes that qualified. During the women’s race I was cheering for Lisa Koll with my friend Greg Hipp. (Lisa, by the way, happened to have a great race and was an All-American in her first national meet.) We haphazardly jumped a fence and I clumsily landed on my back without bracing myself at all. I could tell right away that it was pretty bad and I spent the rest of the afternoon hobbling around the meet. During the ride to the Indy airport with some of my coach’s friends I tried to convince myself that when I landed in Oakland I would be fine. When I changed planes in Las Vegas I was totally miserable and set about making calls to try and find a magical solution. I didn’t have much luck, but fortunately my friend Jim Sorensen set about finding me a doctor in the Bay area. On Tuesday I tried to do a bit of running but after a mile of easy jogging I realized that it was only getting worse and I walked gingerly back to Jim’s place. When he got home from work he took me over to a doctor’s office near Stanford in Palo Alto. Fortunately for me, Dr. Shawn Bek stayed late in his office after a long day of work to give me a thorough inspection. He didn’t really think racing in two days was going to work out for me but after sharing my obligation to the event he gave me the best course of action to make it to the finish line. After his workout at Stanford, Jim drove me to my hotel in San Jose. I spent most of the next two days icing my back and breathing as deeply as my injury would allow. On Wednesday I felt like the adjustment and treatment that Dr. Bek had given me had really helped me progress. I managed four easy miles and a couple strides and convinced myself that if it continued to progress I would definitely be able to compete the next day. Unfortunately, the four miler was probably more than my back could handle and the next morning was worse. I woke up early in an attempt to get things loose on a shakeout run but less than mile into my jog I realized that I was worse off than the day before and walked back to the hotel. I iced a couple of times and hesitantly headed to the start line. This is where the story starts to get funny but I’d prefer to leave the post a readable length so consider this a cliff hanger (hopefully I’ll post the rest within 4 weeks)…