I Should Have Known Better

Chapter I - As it Was

Hindsight is usually 20/20 of course, but I had clear clues about the outcome as these events ware unfolding. You would think that at age 82 one would have learned a little calmness, clearness of mind, and good judgment even in stressful situations. In my case, a little setback in my training program caused some anxiety and as a result hasty and not well thought out decisions were made. It was supposed to be the time when I would step up my training a bit ...

But first I want to take a look back at how all this unfolded.

The idea started fifteen years ago when a friend brought me a series of articles written by Robert Sibley in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. I started reading and soon became quite captivated by his initial struggles, his adventures and the sense of belonging to a group of like-minded travellers and pilgrims.

I didn't think seriously at the time about doing the trek myself but it always stayed in the back of my mind as something I might do someday. I always liked the idea of adventure, but being a cautious person by nature I would want my adventure to be in a somewhat controlled environment. Climbing Mt Everest would be way out of the question for example, because it was too unpredictable, and too dangerous.

I was never a hiker or even a walker although I used to be a runner/jogger for many years in my forties. Back then running was just what I needed. I always felt some stress at work, maybe because people were always being fired and the pressure to produce was constant. I worked in high tech at Nortel where we were leaders in our technologies which made it even more stressful because our survival depended upon staying ahead of the rest.

One thing I came to realize after surviving a few mass layoffs was that perception and image were as important as performance. When departments had to cut 20 % of their staff it was a somewhat arbitrary decision. Loners and misfits were often targets because they weren't seen as contributors because most managers didn't know much about them or what they did. It was a bit of a game with unwritten rules, but you still had to learn how to play. I was in my forties then and about ten years older than most of my colleagues. I didn't want to be seen as an old guy amongst the younger more energetic and sharper ones.

I remember one day when we had some things to move around in our office, organizing our work spaces, when one of our colleagues said "I am forty years old now, I don't lift anything anymore". I thought to myself, 'OMG, that is not the image to be displaying'.

Even in my youth I was always aware of my fitness level or lack of it. At University when I wanted to eat at the athlete's table because of the extra perks, I joined the track team. We had to run around the track as basic training and I thought I would die the first couple of times. But back then most of us could get in some kind of shape in two weeks. Not any more.

The whole world knew about aerobics from Kenneth Cooper in the late sixties and the value of running. It seemed to be a good fit for me, not just because everybody seemed to be doing it, or to stay youthful and healthy, but it didn't seem like a bad image to have either. I was never a distance runner, even in high school I only ran dashes or sprints, and on my toes with spikes. So I had to learn to land on my heel first. Pretty basic stuff.

So I started along with many others at work, and eventually I got fit enough to run long enough to experience the runner's high. It turned out to be the greatest stress reliever that I have ever found. I took it seriously, setting goals like 10K races and started serious training, and running in the races sponsored by people at work. I read every edition of Runners World. I learned how to run and buy shoes to avoid knee pain. I knew that each type of running shoe was designed for only 15% of the population and that you needed to know if you were a pronator or supinator. I really got into it.

Every morning I would get going in the dark in all weather all year round on a 8 KM run. Almost every time as I headed out in the freezing cold at 5 am running on the white line in the middle of our country road, my feet and hands and face freezing, I would ask myself,

"why in hell am I doing this".

Then on the way back when I was warmed up on the last kilometer it would feel really good. After a shower and on the drive to work, I knew why I was doing it from the glow and calmness that I felt which would stay with me all day.

I soon found that just running was necessary, but not sufficient, because your upper body has to be fit also, so I would work in some gym time and lift weights. As well every few days I would stop at a track and run sprints to further develop my leg muscles. I was putting in a lot of time running and training, but not totally in the safest or most effective way. I learned after the fact that cross training was important to avoid injury; i.e. mix in different activities like biking or swimming that are good for aerobics but use different muscle groups. If only one type is used there is over strengthening in some muscles at the expense of others. This is an accident waiting to happen. Especially for runners there needs to be a balance in all the leg muscle groups.

It became addictive, but a good addiction I thought, and for many years I kept this up ... until I developed sciatica. Back then, the doctors who contributed to magazines like Runners World would never advise you to stop running even if you had sciatica.

'Just run through the pain', as they used to say.

So I ran for a whole year training for a 10K in the fall with leg and butt pain. During the race when I felt the pain with every step I started to have doubts about the doctor's advice. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it might not be clever to be pounding the pavement and jarring the spine when you have degenerative vertebrae and herniated lumbar discs. So I finally stopped running when I was fifty years old.

By then my sciatica was extremely painful and very restrictive. I couldn't sit in a chair at work or on any soft sofa. I also had to travel a lot with my work and as you know there is often quite a bit of walking between gates in airports. One day I realized my left leg was not working properly and I couldn't seem to do anything about it. This bothered me a great deal because at fifty I didn't like the idea of my body falling apart so soon. After all I was only half way through this trip.