My Health and Fitness Blog

A couple of weeks ago, I ran the Baltimore Marathon. It was my first time running this particular race and the first time attempting to run this extreme length of distance - approximately 26 miles. For most people, a full marathon usually takes anywhere from 3-6 hours to complete. It’s quite a feat for someone like myself who usually only engages in 4 miles running a few times a week.

So what made me want to attempt this monstrosity of a race? Well, I’ve been running all my life, ever since I ran track in high school, and wanted to achieve something great by pushing myself to the limit. Finishing a marathon is one of the highest accomplishments for running enthusiasts such as myself. By running and finishing such a sizable race, you are able do what only a few can do. That’s monumental. Who wouldn’t want to add a full 26 mile marathon finish on his or her list of “Top things I’ve completed in my lifetime.” It’s definitely on my to do list - is it on yours?

My Marathon Running Ambition Meets the Reality of Pain, And Lots Of It

Despite putting forth all the energy I could muster, sadly, I wasn’t able finish the 26 mile marathon race. I had to withdraw from the run at around the mile 19 mark. I was so close to the end, just 7 more miles to go, but by this point, my legs couldn’t bear to go any further. For the first 13 miles, I remember cruising at a steady 8.5 minute-mile pace, and my body was feeling pretty good. Then around the 16 mile mark, my poor legs started to breakdown. My knees started to ache and got really sore. Then my hips started to hurt really bad. My quads, hamstrings, and calves shortly followed. Soon, both my legs started to severely cramp and my muscles began to falter. Eventually, I had to stop. I started walking, hoping to recover by slowly walking for a bit. By this point, I wasn’t the only marathon participant who was walking. There were actually quite a lot of fellow runners walking all around me, all suffering from the same painful sensations of marathon reality. Unfortunately for me, this part of the race was also where you started seeing a continuous cycle of escalating hills.

I walked for about 3 miles through endless punishing hills, but at the 19 mile mark, I was forced to withdraw from the race as I could no longer continue. My legs weren’t recovering anymore, and the aching pain was just getting worse. Unable to maintain my balance, my body started to wobble. My hips could no longer handle the pushing forward motions my legs were producing. At that point, I could tell that my legs were going to completely cave out under me, so I came to a halt. Temporary paralysis is an inevitable side effect of cramping. Because I didn’t want my legs to collapse in the middle of the race, with the energy I had left in my legs, I gingerly approached a nearby police officer who was providing security for marathon participants to tell her I was withdrawing and needed a shuttle ride back. As the shuttle was taking me back, it ran into heavy traffic due to road closures because of the race. The shuttle driver somehow took a wrong turn and seemed to gotten lost at certain point on its way to the finish line. At this point, more than 45 minutes had passed since I sat on the shuttle bus, still stuck in traffic, and by then my legs were feeling much better. So I made the decision to get off the bus and get back into the race, thus jogging the remaining mile to finish line. It was a strange feeling as I jogged towards the finish line because so many spectators were cheering, not realizing that I hadn’t actually run the full course. They didn’t know that I had made it to the finish line with a strange combination of part running, part walking, and part shuttle ride.

Thoughts About How To Improve On My Exercise and Training Habits For Future Marathon Runs

The one thing I learned from the experience is that you can’t take on this type of mammoth race on sheer fitness alone. Just because you’re in great shape and run everyday does not necessarily mean you have the necessary training to complete a punishing 26 mile run. It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t train for the marathon that cost me the ability to run the full course, it was that I wasn’t able to train up to 26 miles before race time. The most distance I was able to cover during my training was 15 miles. It was brash and foolish of me to think I could somehow duplicate the 15 miles I had trained for during the actual race and somehow pull out an extra 11 miles thereafter.

I known two marathon runners who trained up to 20 miles before running their first full fledged 26 mile marathon. One struggled mightily to finish the remaining six, and had to battle severe cramping to carry himself to the finish line. The other runner withdrew from the race because his body simply could not take it anymore. The reality is that marathon running requires a training regimen that incorporates actual 26 mile practice runs. Any distance shorter than that simply won’t prepare and condition the body sufficiently for the onslaught it will ultimately face during the real thing.

One thing to remember, is that the ordinary human body simply was not meant to handle 26.2 miles of continuous running at the pace that marathon runners sustain. The legend of how marathon running came happened during ancient times during the age of the Greeks, and involved Athenian messenger, Philippides, who was said to have ran a distance of 26 miles from the battlefield in the city of Marathon to Athens to announce the victory over the Persians. Well, Philippides died shortly after delivering his message. The point is - running a marathon puts a lot of stress on the human body and it can even be damaging to one’s health, if it’s not conditioned properly prior to maximum physical exertion. Just think about it, you’re forcing the body to keep running when it wants to stop and heal. Without proper training and conditioning, your body is going to shut down in midstream. Remember, there is a big difference in the way your body feels at mile 20 and mile 26, or even mile 16 in my case.

For those of you thinking about running a marathon some day, I strongly recommend that you train and condition yourself properly for the full 26.2 miles before you attempt the actual race. You don’t want to experience harsh reality the way I did, bailing out in the middle of the race in lot of pain and feeling the anguish of not being able to finish. Just imagine the extra confidence you’ll have running a full 26 mile marathon when you know you can do it because you’ve already ran the 26.2 miles in practice, compared to someone who’s only banking on luck and sheer willpower alone. Someday in the near future, I will attempt to run a full marathon again, but until then, I will continue to train and get myself in better shape.

There are different types of bodily pain that we may experience in life, and there are different approaches to diagnosing and treating them. Acute pain is usually easier to define as it’s oftentimes preceded by some form of identifiable trigger - such as slipping on an icy surface and twisting an ankle, or having a failing appendix that is causing sharp pain on one side of the body. But chronic, soft tissue pain is a much more difficult type of problem to accurately pinpoint and define. With acute pain, the uncomfortable sensation usually results from the aftermath of either a specific injurious event you can point to, or it arises from the effects of a failing organ of the body. Since my childhood, I’ve fallen down, scraped my knee, bumped my head, and bruised my arms and hands numerous times. Each time the bloody scratches and bruises hurt, but the wounds were always quickly treated with antiseptics and patched up with Band Aids, resulting in full recovery. While oftentimes quite intense, the experiences of acute pain were usually only temporary.

On the other hand, chronic pain is substantially harder to diagnose and treat, and the cause - significantly less concrete to define. Oftentimes, the patient is left wondering what he or she can possibly do to make the pain go away. Case in point - ever since I was a teenager, I’ve had to live with a chronic soreness and stiff pain in my neck, shoulder, and upper back region that simply won’t go away. To this day I still don’t know what caused it - as the pain is always present, and has a tendency to periodically fluctuate in intensity. With this type of soft tissue, almost phantom-like pain not arising from any specific injury (based on what I know), the diagnosis and treatment process is often much more elusive and non-apparent. As evidenced by the fact that it’s been literally a lifelong pain in the neck for me, I’ve simply had to get used to living with the inconvenience to the best of my ability. Sometimes with these types of things, all we can really do is practice an active lifestyle that will minimize the chronic pain as much as possible, and try our best to adopt physical and mental habit changes to better manage it.

Describing The Chronic Pain and Un-Curable Soreness In My Shoulder and Neck Region, and How I’ve Dealt With It Over Time

As I gradually approach my early 30’s and reflect back in time about my problem, I think the pain started during my mid high school years. However, I didn’t fully recognize its presence until college when the stress of studying and bad sitting posture brought out by constant hunching over while preparing for exams finally exacerbated the pain into full realization. Since then, I’ve sought the attention of main stream physicians and alternative medical witch doctors of sorts for my neck and shoulder pain. Frankly I don’t think the numerous doctors and nurses I’ve spoken to over the years ever took my complaints of pain very seriously. After all, it’s not like I was screaming out in agony or clutching a specific body part that was badly damaged. In fact, describing the painful sensations and tingling soreness I felt was a challenge in of itself.

My chronic shoulder and neck pain could be best described as a tiresome, aching muscle sensation that greatly worsens and is felt to a greater degree whenever I tilt my neck around in wide circles or bend it to stretch it. When I roll my neck around in wide circles, the muscular motion sends out painful sensations from the rear base of my head hairline, down my neck, and into the surrounding shoulder area. The worst pain is felt when I tilt my head towards my shoulder blades. When I do that, I experience a sharp and painful numbing lightening burst - an almost electrical joint of numbness that shoots down my arm and into my elbow funny bone area, causing a tinging sensation that frequently results in temporary loss of use of the afflicted arm. The numbing feeling is much more pronounced on my left arm and left shoulder than my right arm and right shoulder. My suspicion and self diagnosis has always been that perhaps my neck muscle was somehow pinching a stray nerve when I twisted my neck in certain positions.

Other than seeking out the advice of professional doctors who offered little in the way of diagnoses or treatment solutions beyond advising me to exercise more and eat a healthier diet comprised of fruits and vegetables (no new information here), I’ve also tried out alternative medical treatment options as well. During college, since my school health insurance covered it, I sought out the services of a health center acupuncturist, a health practitioner trained in the Chinese art and skill of using super thin needles to stimulate special Qi (pronounced “Chi”) inspired pressure points to incite special healing points in the body. While the seemingly magical acupuncture needles that the health practitioner stuck in my ears (of all places) did seem to soothe and generate a strange warm sensation in my head and upper shoulder region, the pin pricking sessions never cured my pain. They merely warmed and soothed the pain away momentarily, like a nice massage. However, the chronic pain persisted, unfortunately.

Unable to cure myself of my chronic neck and shoulder pain, I’ve learned to live with it as best as possible. Currently, I believe my chronic shoulder and neck pain is heavily influenced and exacerbated by increased stress and lack of exercise. While my perpetual soreness sensation never really goes away and is always present from the moment I get out of bed to the moment I go to sleep, the pain is substantially worse when I am overly stressed or confined to non-mobile positions for long periods of time. Back when I was in college and later law school, I studied tremendously and spent a great number of hours hunched over a library study desk until the wee morning hours in a rather stationary pose. Because of pressing academic deadlines and constant stress over the need to study for exams, those times were especially difficult and harsh on my neck and shoulder pain. Back then, the pain would often grow so bad that I’d have to pop a few over-the-counter pain pills just to keep my mind focused and off my aching shoulders. What started out as consuming 1 or 2 extra strength Tylenol’s ultimately turned into 2 or 3 Tylenol’s along with another 2-3 Advil’s at the same time. The pain killers effectively lessened the pain for a few blissful hours, but the effects were always temporary.

Unable To Cure My Mysterious Chronic Neck and Shoulder Pain With Medicine, I’ve Turned To A More Holistic Solution That Involves Improving My Sleep, Diet, and Exercise Habits

Despite my best efforts to treat the problem, I was merely masking the symptoms with over the counter drugs. My chronic neck pain continued long after graduate school and didn’t subside until I started working a less stressful line of work. Since I started running my own home business from the comforts of my own house, my academic and on the job stresses have greatly diminished. I’m sleeping a lot more consistently again, now that I no longer have to get up extremely early in the morning to go to a so-called real job. I also feel like I’m eating healthier now that I can prepare my own meals and choose what I want to eat for lunch and dinner, instead of having to settle for fast food sandwiches at work. Working from home has also allowed me to exercise more, giving me time to run on the treadmill to get myself back in shape. While the pain still lingers on in the recesses of my neck and shoulder, the decline in stress levels and the healthier life I’m living now have resulted in a noticeable decline in neck pain.

Along the way, I’ve learned a couple things about this chronic lifelong pain of mine. Looking at the times in my life when my chronic neck and shoulder pain ache increased, and reviewing the times in my life when the pain subsided, I think it’s safe to say that my diet choices, exercise regiment, and sleeping schedule have a huge impact on the severity of my pain. Whenever I swim now or run several miles on the treadmill, I always feel much more relaxed afterwards. While still ever present, my neck and shoulder aches and pains seem to momentarily subside after some healthy physical activity. Perhaps it’s the endorphins, the natural boost in adrenaline, or just the placebo psychological effect of physical activity and attempts at healthier living practices, but they help nevertheless. Until I can finally find a cure for my chronic shoulder and neck pain once and for all, I will continue to adopt practices that will allow me to better control and manage my disability. At least for now, I think I can accomplish just that with some simple changes to my diet and fitness lifestyle. Such changes may benefit those of you with similiar chronic ailments as well. It definitely beats popping pills all the time.