Boston Y2K: Compartments and Cell Phones and Chicks, Oh Yeah

Aside from the chocolate, what stands out most from my experience at Boston this year were the compartments, and cell phones, and, ahem, chicks, but not necessarily in this order.  Consider this not only a Boston race report, but also a Dummies guide to sports injuries, telecommunications, and, um, handling fame?

After running the Athens Marathon last year, I was confident that no other marathon could match the experience of running amuck through three or four thousand years of Greek drama, tragedy, comedy, and victory.  In contrast, I've never been consumed by the sensationalist tabloid drama, tragedy, comedy, and victories of the Kennedies of Hyannis Port, especially since Darryl Hannah was excommunicated from the clan, and given that the worst grade I received in college was in the "American Revolution,"  my desire to visit Boston and Massachusetts has been less than patriotic.

Chocolate:  After qualifying for the Boston Marathon, one kind of feels this patriotic, or unpatriotic, obligation to run it, depending on how you look at it.  Why let a lucky qualifying time go to waste?  It's somewhat analogous to winning a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, though he was really a British chocolate manufacturer, so doesn't  this really make the Boston Marathon an unpatriotic event?  Neverthenonetheless, there were lots of kids & spectators along the course handing out miniature chocolate bars & chocolate-flavored PowerGel to runners and, while passing the all-female Wellesley College, the women were bearing kisses, and not just of the chocolate variety either.  For this reason alone, the Boston Marathon makes for a pretty suh-weet excuse to take off work on a Monday to make the 26 mile trek from Hopkinton to Boston.

Compartment Syndrome:  (Be forewarned that I am just charading as a medical professional, so read anything I write with a grain of glucosamine or chondroitin.)  While many of us may have experienced shin splints at one time or another, a less familiar, more defined lower leg injury involves the four muscle compartments of the calves--the anterior, lateral, superficial posterior, and deep posterior compartments (hey, I do my research).  Each of these compartments is encased in a non-elastic tissue called "fascia."  When the muscle volume within each of these compartments increases, pressure rises, compressing nerves and obstructing bloodflow.  This is not the most comfortable feeling in the world, as I've learned over the course of the past six months, and at several marathons along the way.  Without fail, on every run, the anterior compartments of my shins, would become excruciatingly tight and cramped, peaking in intensity at about 3-4 miles, and gradually subsiding after about 5-6 miles.  Naturally, as marathoners, we stubbornly grin and bear the pain, blind to whatever consequences there may be.

Non-surgical treatments, including stretching and myofascial massage therapy (however, this was more like myo-fascist therapy, given the deep tissue pain that the therapist was inflicting on me), failed to relieve my symptoms.   Three days before the Boston Marathon, I saw my doc and scheduled fasciotomies on both of my anterior compartments, but then, 5 minutes later, chickened out and said I'd call back.  Two weeks after Boston, I rescheduled, so now the big fascia partee will be in mid May.

The fasciotomies will involve making an initial incision in the skin, then an additional incision down the entire length of the compartment fascia to relieve the elevated tissue pressure.  Another way to understand this is to imagine that you are wearing a tight pair of jeans (representing non-elastic fascia) at Thanksgiving.  After the Thanksgiving gorge, pressure within the jeans builds up, contributing to that familiar tight cramping and pain around the gut.   While we normally would not go so far as cutting the jeans with a knife to quickly relieve the pressure, except in acute cases, we may unbutton the jeans or loosen belt buckles to achieve similar results.  At the end of the day, after the faciotomies, I will have new scars streaking down each shin.  I have been warned that "chicks dig guys with scars."  This remains to be seen.  Cant wait, cant wait.

If you suspect you've got a case of compartment syndrome, have your compartment pressure measured today.  For more on compartment syndrome, as well as microfracture (for the cartilaginously-challenged), visit my website:   http://www.woohoo.org/microfracture.htm.

Cell Phones:  Given that compartment syndrome has plagued my running for over half a year, slowing me down by as much as 2-3 minutes per mile, I figured there was no sense in trying to run a PR at Boston.  I decided to just lay back and smell the chocolate along the course.   After reading a Runner's World article about one of it's editors running Boston with a cell phone last year, I started updating the numbers in my cell phone.  When it comes to forward-looking organization, the Boston Athletic Association is on the cutting edge.  The Monday, High Noon EST start of the marathon allows runners from the West Coast to phone friends and family back home at 9AM PST, just as they are arriving at work, or just as they are waking up to see if their start-ups are still listed on the NASDAQ.  A standard 8AM EST start would have forced me to wake up everyone in the Bay Area at 5AM PST.  Only the BAA could foresee the rise of the cell phone and the impact this would have on marathon starting times. 

So, for about the first 5 miles, I was actively calling friends and leaving messages.  I never got into many lengthy conversations, though one call with a chick in Denver lasted over 10 minutes, as she tried to talk me out of the fasciotomy, telling me to give up the marathon and take up biking instead.   Needless to say, I hung up on her.  Then on another call, I scheduled lunch for dim sum on Wednesday, two days later at 11:30AM at Mayflower, best dim sum in the Bay Area (is it more than coincidence that this restaurant bears the name of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to Massachusetts?).  Somewhere around 6 miles, the compartment syndrome was really kicking in, and I almost called my doc's assistant to reschedule the surgery, but held off. 

For the first half of the marathon, I was willingly answering calls, but by this time, I was surprised to realize that I was running at sub-3 hour pace, compartments, cell phone, and all.  At that point, looking at my cell phone, a sick feeling came across me.  I wanted to hurl that thing back to Hopkinton, but was more concerned about having to tell MIS I lost it and letting them expense it from my pay check.  So I hauled that thing to the finish, vowing to hold each individual, with whom I chatted, personally responsible for slowing me down if I didn't come in under 3 hours, though I guess waiting until mile 24 to turn off the phone would've helped.   Fortunately for them, I made it, albeit with less than a minute to spare.   Just for future reference, if you've gotta run with a cell phone, make it lightweight and get one of those handsfree ear plugs, not that I'll ever run with that ball and chain again.  As a final note, I should add that I LOST the cell phone the night of the marathon, after I left it in the cab back to my hotel.

ahem, Chicks:  Should it come as any surprise that Boston gave, or forced upon, us the New Kids on the Block?   About half a mile away from Wellesley College, one could hear the deafening shrieks and shrills of the ladies of the all-female institution lined up along the course.   These marathon groupies made for one of the most spectacular and heart-stoppingly entertaining half mile stretches of any marathon I've run.  I suddenly became Donny Osmond, Michael Johnson, Dennis Rodman, and George W. Bush, all at once.  High-fiving the half mile strip of groupies and wearing the same Cal Aggie t-shirt, for the fifth marathon in a row, also brought on some gratuitous cheering.  Then like so many rock stars before me, the music died and I started singing to my new-found fans, "bye bye Miss American Pie," as the course led us out of Wellesley and on towards Boston.   Was that it????  Was that my fifteen minutes of fame????  I turned to the runner next to me and suggested, "We should run back there and do that again."

Do that again?  Wellesley 2001--the reunion tour.