The mechanics of memory are fascinating. How our subconscious instantaneously determines which moments will be immortalised like a mental Polaroid picture.
Even with a head full of painkilling opiates, that mental shutter snapped, and I can vividly recall the voice from behind the screen of the x-ray room asking his colleague, “Is that his scan?” and the dreaded realisation that I was in trouble.
Hours earlier I’d been limping towards Broadway in Newmarket for a film screening for work when I tripped up a curb. I felt a strange, subtle pop in the top of my left leg, and the slightest sensation of pressure being released. It caused me to collapse in a fog of confusion. Immediately I tried to stand, but my left leg buckled like an overcooked noodle, again sending me crashing to the ground. But still no pain. Our body’s ability to momentarily manage injury is as magnificent as its memory-making capacity. I phoned my friend who was already at the cinema and laughed down the line at the ridiculousness of my situation. I was spreadeagled on the pavement around the corner, I told him, I couldn’t stand up and I simply couldn’t figure out why. I could still wriggle my toes, I thought, it can’t be that bad. The laughter, however, stopped as my friend arrived, and an unimaginable pain began to take hold.
Days earlier I’d dragged my way around Rotorua Lake for the Rotorua Marathon which was celebrating its 50th year, having, a few days before that, developed what felt like a groin strain. Lining up under a crisp, blue autumn sky on race day, I tried to convince myself that I’d be able to run the ‘strain’ off, but continued over page the force of anything faster than a slow walk sent a bolt of electricity up my left side. As the course kissed the base of the lake, I realised that it was time to either commit or quit. Taurean stubbornness aside, even it if it meant crawling on all fours, I’d spent far too many hours preparing both my body and my mind for this day and there was no way that I was not going to do everything I could to make that finish line.
Seconds under seven hours later, I did.
Back on Broadway, the pain level reached crescendo. An ambulance had been called, but to my anger – and my friend’s understandable frustration who had by this point been supporting my leg for around half-an-hour – a St John ute arrived instead. The medic soon realised that a proper ambulance – with a stretcher and something stronger than gas and air – was needed.
The x-ray revealed a V-shaped break in the femoral head, requiring surgery, a blood transfusion, and pinning – a metal plate placed over the fracture held in place by screws into the bone. That so-called groin strain had been a stress fracture – not uncommon for long distance runners – that had been ignored and unrested until it finally fully gave way.
My surgeon told me that he sees these kind of injuries every five years or so. Always men, always in their 30s, who have overestimated their physical prowess and pushed themselves too far, too fast; but what he really meant, I suspect, was idiot blokes so delusional as to believe that they’re only a decent diet and six-month training routine away from elite-level athletics. (This is backed up by fact: one study showed a fifth of men believed that they ‘could have turned pro’.)
My youth had been a sporty one, but that soon gave way to a couple of decades of travelling and partying and as I entered my fourth decade, I realised that there were certain vices that I needed to cut back on, and others that I needed to altogether quit. And so, I swapped my addiction to nicotine to an addiction to tarmac instead. Running’s not a sport that you instantly fall in love with, but once you do, you fall big.
As the kilometres increased, I entered quarter- and halfmarathons and then came training for Rotorua. Running seemed to occupy my every waking thought. I would regularly run half-marathon distances multiple times a week. Sometimes I’d run twice a day. Big runs. Night runs were my favourite, tearing through the still, salty air along Tamaki Drive. Once in that galloping groove, it feels as though your heart, your breath, your thoughts, and your feet all move to the same beat. The rhythmic rubber thudding against the pavement sends you into an almost hypnotic state. It’s meditation, on the move. And runner’s high really is a thing.
Until it’s not.
After the surgery, I was told there was fair chance I’d require a hip replacement (10 years later, I haven’t, touch wood), but what I do have is chronic discomfort to the outside of my thigh. I’ve learned to not focus on the irritating click of muscle as it moves across the hip with every left step. The pinning also resulted in leg-length discrepancy – I grew about an inch on one side! – meaning I must wear a heel raise in my right shoe to straighten out my spine, and so walking barefoot remains very uncomfortable (like walking while only wearing one boot, for a ‘normal’ person).
The recovery period following a hip fracture is depressingly long and painful, even for a fit 34-year-old (hip fractures in the elderly are not uncommon and sometimes fatal due to the likes of blood clots from being bedridden), and I admit to having a frustrated meltdown in the bathroom soon after leaving hospital as I leaned on the sink with my crutches propped up in the corner, not helped by the potent painkillers that played havoc with my emotional state.
One thing that comes from training for – and then completing – a marathon, is an increased confidence in both your mental and physical capabilities, and you can’t help but feel prouder still when telling people that you did it with a stress-fractured hip! My doctor told me that my running days were over and over the following years I embraced hiking and cycling and yoga instead.
One study showed a fifth of men believed that they ‘could have turned pro’.
I continue to love them all, but nothing ever quite scratched that itch like running did. And the fact that I’d hobbled, rather than ran, across that finish line of my first full marathon always bothered me, too.
So, in May, I scratched that itch, by running – just about! – across the finish line of the 60th Rotorua Marathon nearly 10 years to the day since that ill-fated first full race. Not that a marathon really is about racing. Not for most everyday Joes, anyway. As the late Fred Lebow, former president of the New York Road Runners Club and former race director of the New York City Marathon, once commented: “The marathon gives us a stage, where we perform and be proud… In an unequal world, in this one endeavour, people of vastly different abilities share something in common: the act of going the distance.”
I’m surprised by the number of people that ask why on Earth you’d want to put yourself through such physical stress (though a marathon hammers the mind just as much as it does the muscles). It’s easy to challenge others, but it’s the challenges which we set ourselves that take the most discipline and yield the most reward. And of course, it doesn’t have to be a marathon. But it’s only from such challenges can we grow, spiritually or physically. Now, as a father, I also wish to set good examples for my son. To show – not just tell – him the importance of “going the distance”, whatever form that journey might take.
When I started training for the marathon last year, my intention was that it would give me some sort of closure, complete a circle, and be my final full one. But of course, I’ve got the bug again, and my Auckland Marathon is already booked. By then I’ll have two sons watching me cross the finish line; the challenge has only just begun.
