Ilio tibia band syndrome. I have no idea what those words mean, but trust me that's what's going on in my right leg. I mention it here only because I can't tell anyone close to me. They would worry. So I'm telling the rest of the world. I'm injured, not badly, but injured. Will one of you look up this injury and tell me if I'm spelling it right?
How do I know that no one I love will read this? I've been writing for 30 years, mostly as a newspaper reporter. I've written columns, reviews, features, news stories. I've written free-lance magazine stories. I've written in academic journals. Hey, my book on the Sierra Nevada was published in 2000. No one in my family reads that stuff. No one in my extended family reads that stuff. Reading me is like saying, "I'd rather read the soup label, but I'm all out of soup."
Only acquaintances, some friends and total strangers read me.
So, here we are and my leg is really beginning to bug me. I want to work out every day. This August, I'll be taking off on my leg (sorry) of a tag-team relay on the John Muir Trail. Three other writers and I are dividing up this 218-mile trail. One writer is in her 20s, one in his 30s, one in her 40s and then there's me. The guy with the "ouch leg" in his 50s.
The only reason I know my leg is injured is that I've been a runner for the last 20 years or so, and I've had lots of injuries. I notice they happen a lot more now than they did 10 years ago. Along the way, I've learned some of their names. Nice thing about being in your 50s: You forget almost everything except pain.
Well, I haven't forgotten the name of this ilio tibia whatever because I just had it in 2003 before a half marathon. I got through that, I ran the half marathon. I got an elbow in the chest from a 20-something woman passing me in the last five yards of the run. And I re-injured my leg, leaving me with a very lasting impression of this pain.
I have to heal. Train. And then go out there and backpack in August. Those younger writers will have an easier time, I think, of getting in shape. But I've got something they probably don't have. I have experience. I have pain. If my wife read this, she'd advise me to forget the leg and have my head examined .
