GRC Training: on finding inspiration and muddling through

If you've read any of my recent posts about training for the GORUCK Challenge, you know that for the last month I've been struggling with a knee injury and feeling pretty low about my progress. Not too much has changed in the last couple of weeks, but I finally got in to see a physical therapist on Monday, who identified some biomechanical problems with my stride and got me started on a regimen of exercises and stretches to correct them. That's given me a more constructive outlet for my frustration -- I can at least focus on doing these exercises that someone knowledgeable thinks will help.

This morning I managed to do back-to-back 2-mile run/walks with 4 bricks in my pack by limiting my running to 2 minutes at a time. Even in short spurts, running on the slightest, slightest downhill grade would start to make the knee hurt. Not a lot, but enough that if I were to continue beyond 2 minutes it would probably get worse. Now that it's over, I can't descend stairs without pain, despite three rounds of ice. I'm just not making progress nearly as fast as I want to.

What's bothering me the most about having to limit my running is that I no longer feel tough. The trust that I used to have in my body has been replaced with fear. Fear that I'll injure myself in some other way, fear that my knee won't get better in time, fear that it WILL get well enough for my training runs, but not for the demands of the GRC.

Unexpected inspiration

Nevertheless, I feel like I'm starting to cope with this injury a little more constructively, thanks in large part to three unlikely pieces of inspiration I stumbled across in the last 24 hours.

I  have a smarphone app that sends me a random Bible verse every day. Yesterday morning when I picked up my phone, it read:

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. [2 Timothy 1:7]

Seeing this verse made me pause, as it spoke directly to the psychological struggles I'm having. It gave me a little boost to remember that I am not fragile, but powerful. My knee may not be at 100%, but I'm still doing some kind of workout at least 6 days a week, still probably in the best shape of my life, and perfectly capable of overcoming this injury. The self-control bit helped me step back and see that my blind frustration isn't productive. It does me no good to set arbitrary expectations about how fast my knee should heal. I've got to focus on what it DOES feel like, what I CAN do, and have the patience to work through the injury.

Later that evening, I was reading my usual assortment of blogs and websites, when I stumbled across an article called "The Hard Way" over at ITS Tactical / Art of Manliness. The article makes the point that our culture has come to associate success more with "quick fixes" and "magic formulas" than long, hard work. We almost instinctively look for ways to reap the rewards of hard work without actually having to do it: we'd rather drive to the top of a mountain and snap a picture at the "scenic overlook" than spend 8 hours hiking up. The point is, even though many successful people got that way not because of brilliance or luck, but from months or years of persistent effort, we don't often celebrate that anymore.

This idea is part of why I signed up for the GRC. I DO want to confront something that's really hard and become a stronger person because of it. But for some reason, I expected the 12-hour slog through the dark to be the only hard part. I thought that training would be "easy" - just a matter of setting goals, coming up with a plan, and sticking to it. As I read the article, I realized that getting through training and this injury is part of the challenge. It was unexpected. It screwed up my plans. It sucks. And now I have to deal with it.

I was foolish to think I could ratchet up my level of fitness so much without some sort of setback -- whether an injury, lack of motivation, or something else. Now that I see this as part of the journey, part of the Challenge, I can put the sense of frustration behind me and attack it head on. It may be the first in a series of similar trials I'll face during the GRC itself.

I'm doing everything I can, every day, to get over this injury, but I'm also coming to accept the fact that my knee is going to recover at it's own pace, and I just don't know if that will happen in time for me to do the Challenge. I was talking to my wife, Katherine (inspiration #3), who has been helping me maintain perspective through this whole process. I told her that if I'm not able to participate because of this injury, I'd feel like the last 4 months of training and preparation were a failure. She reminded me that in the bigger picture, I'm still "winning." I've taken my fitness to a whole new level as a result of all this training, and the journey so far has already taught me a lot about myself. I could abandon the GRC right now and be a better, stronger person for having signed up.

But I'm not going to do that.