Running After Spaghetti

The Life of a Pacer

by Tommy Neeson

Author of Four Million Steps: From Maine to Florida and the Memories In Between

Many marathon entrants will opt to follow the lead of official pacers. I’m not referring to the 115lbs speedsters setting the tempo for world record attempts, but pace setters for the average Joe. Folks who are looking to maybe run a personal best or perhaps qualify for the Boston marathon. You know, morons like you and me.

Whatever the reason, I’ve toed the line as pacer at many a marathon. Traveling as far west as Eugene and LA, to mid-west races such as Grandma’s and Dallas, to trotting all the way up and down the east coast including NYC, Marine Corps, Disney and the best post-race party of them all, the Shamrock Sportsfest in Virginia Beach, VA. Despite being in different areas of the country, all these races have one solid attraction for me – beer.

It’s not to say that the only reason I lace up my 9.1oz war boots as a pacer is strictly because of that golden nectar of the gods. No, no, that would be flat out silly. The fact is beer is probably only 85% of the reason I do it. 10% is for the t-shirt I’ll probably never wear, 4% is because I’m too lazy to be doing laundry and a strong 1% is for all you amazing people I do care deeply for and will promptly forget about after my second beer.

Not all marathons are created equal. Some rely on their stunning course to attract participants, others have a boisterous history, while others are just terrible.

One of my favorite courses is the St. George marathon in Utah. If you don’t negative split this course by minutes you did something very, very wrong. The key with this footrace is to not lean back on the downhills. You need to stay perpendicular or else your quads will become mincemeat by mile 18. Watching the sun break over the southwestern backdrop is breath taking. The drawback is it’s held in a heavy Mormon community and they don’t exactly condone swilling brews – so bring your own.

The Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC sports a decent course. Runners travel past many monuments and historical buildings. Even though the town is littered with undesirables categorized as politicians, they are generally too busy creating lies and having affairs to bother those with a bib on their chest. Without question or equal, Marine Corps provides its competitors with the finest presentation of a finisher’s medal. After lumbering up the short, but sharp, hill at the 26 mile mark and stumbling beyond the finish line, runners are greeted with rows of roped off chutes. At the end of each chute is a soldier decked out in fatigues. They place your new finisher’s medal around your neck and then cap it off by not just giving you a salute, but snapping you one. In a word, it’s awesome. After my third completion of this marathon, I eagerly strolled down the chute to receive my hard earned medal. After citing that I was excited to receive my neck adornment, I was not disappointed as the US serviceman executed a textbook salute. In my excitement, I asked him if he would do that again to which he quickly replied, Absolutely sir, come back next year.

If you are looking to replace your depleted carbs as quickly and as tastily as possible, get yourself over to the 26.2 flat miles of the Shamrock Sportsfest. Being a coastal town, Virginia Beach can experience some tricky winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean. But if you happen to catch this gem on a calm day, you are in for some top performances. What this event doesn’t have are a few things many other marathons do, they don’t have lousy beer that runs out too quickly and they don’t have terrible food that you only eat because you’re starving and would chew your own leg off if you had a decent condiment to accompany it. Going through roughly 42,000 Yuengling beers, Shamrock makes sure you enjoy yourself and ensures you’re warm with some tasty Irish stew. The biggest drawback to Shamrock is probably that they don’t have Marines handing out medals at the end.

Preface – Thank You

Thank you to Casey Sell for sharing her extraordinary journey against incapacitating adversity, and creative recipes. This is Casey’s first published work so she unabashedly immersed herself into the writing of it. You don’t know who you will meet and what events will occur on their path when you place an overwhelming challenge on your own plate.

Thank you to Tommy Neeson who continues to bring levity in tales reflecting on this crazy sport of just putting one foot in front of the other. Tommy and I have known each other for thirteen years and he still surprises me with his unique sometimes-twisted sense of humor.

I had no idea this middle part of the one year journey would lead to running 100 miles/week. This was simply an intended continuation to complete one goal, one race. If you had told me it would happen this way I would have conclusively replied, Not in this lifetime.

Within each chapter certain paragraphs and quotes have been distinctly spaced to emphasize key thoughts. Also, there are two chapters (6 & 7) where I have different experiences separated by an asterisk boundary. After 14 years of running I intentionally write so each chapter hopefully has some valuable insight for runners of all abilities/those who are considering running, so don’t feel compelled to read Endurance in the order of the chapters (even though they are sequential in real time). Supporting this thought, during my final read through of the manuscript I shared with Jane (my loving and awesome wife of 20+ years), Wow, this has been a crazy crooked path leading to these results.

However, you do want to read Never Extinguished in its documented arrangement – Casey brings you along on an incredible personal voyage.

One final and perhaps the most important note. Thank you, the reader, for taking the time to join Casey, Tommy and me as we share this chapter of our running lives.

Never Extinguished

by Casey Sell

1 Osteo-what?

Last night I was invited to join a support group on Facebook for people with osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) lesions. The 748 people in this group were all struggling with the very same problem that forced me to leave my days as a soccer player in the past. I spent a solid hour, maybe more, combing through the posts. Some were scared, others offered advice and well wishes for those about to undergo surgery for the first time. I ran across a 15-year-old girl who had just been told she has osteochondritis dissecans in her left ankle. A fracture in her ankle had been mistaken for a sprain and wasn’t treated properly, and she was told she will probably need surgery to be able to return to basketball. She asked me to share some of my experience with her.

At 14, I was a superstar athlete. I was part of the coincidentally all-blonde travel soccer team for a club called Rush, although I started with them in 1996 when it was still Virginia Beach Soccer Club. Our team looked like a bunch of Barbie dolls, and that’s what a lot of our opponents called us. We had excellent coaching and the perfect team dynamic. As the keeper, I never missed a game and I rarely missed a save. I was also the starting keeper for Princess Anne Middle School’s Soccer team where I only gave up two goals all season, one was in our City Championship game which was the best match of my life. I played indoor in the winter and did the Virginia Beach Sand Soccer Tournament every summer, and I even joined the middle school field hockey team when they asked me to be their goalie. I even just learned to snowboard that year, but I had been skiing since age 4. I surfed and skateboarded, and did just about anything else that involved a board but I started to feel a sharp pain in my left ankle that just wouldn’t go away.

On the bus to school one day, my best friend Morgan cut her finger and needed to go to the nurse for a Band-Aid. Being the helpful friend that loved to miss class, I joined her. Walking into the school office, I flung the door open and caught my ring finger between the handle and the tall metal doorstopper. It was immediately sprained. Luckily, I was on my way to the school nurse anyway so I showed her my boo-boo and she sent me to Patient First for x-rays. I was sure it wasn’t broken, and the doctor confirmed the sprain. I asked them to take a peek at the left ankle while I was there, just to see. They took x-rays and sent me on my merry way. There was no injury to be found.

Two days later, I got a phone call from Radiology, Um, we think there may be something going on in your ankle, we recommend an MRI. My mom, the ultimate caregiver, booked an appointment with the Orthopedic Surgeon for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Field Hockey Team, the best of the best. I remember the day I sat in her office, so optimistic and ready to face whatever came next. I had the heart of a lion that day.

You will never be a runner.

Well that does suck, but I’m a goalie, what are my chances of returning to that? I don’t need to run to do that job.

There is a very good chance you will never play again, which I heard as There is a small chance you may be able to play again! I tightly clung to that hope for the next 4 years.

Her prescription was the toughest pill I had ever been forced to swallow, no sports. No running, no jumping, no impact whatsoever. No soccer, no field hockey, no surfing. I was to walk only when necessary and rest. Rest? What is that? Every 6 months I had an MRI done to check my progress. Her goal was to try to get the lesion to heal on its own, but after a few months I started having similar pain in my other ankle.

All it took was one more MRI to confirm that my condition had upgraded to bilateral ankle OCD. An Osteochondrital Lesion, essentially a dead spot, had formed on the talus (inside the ankle joint on top of the lower bone) of both of my ankles. Normally, when these lesions form, it starts with a bone chip or fragment that lodges in the cartilage of the joint. With every step that bone irritates the soft tissue, cartilage and bone, causing it to slowly die. How or why this happened to me she wasn’t able to explain because there was never a bone chip to be found in either ankle. I was told that I may have been compensating my weight which is how I ended up with lesions in both ankles, but that it may also be genetic. I never did get a definitive answer, but I guess none of that really mattered in relation to the fact that it was what it was and I just had to put on my big girl pants. So naturally, I broke down and cried the whole way home.

Last night, my heart broke all over again for this 15-year-old basketball player who wanted nothing more than to run and jump again like all of her teammates. I saw my struggle in her eyes, from the beginning stages where you don’t fully understand what is happening but you’re just anxious to get back to being normal again. I wanted her to know that this is not the end for her. Whether she returns to basketball or not, she can still find ways to be an athlete. I hope that my story will inspire her, and others struggling with their own personal forms of adversity, to find a way to keep their mind strong and continue to find ways to push themselves as an athlete.

2 Surgeries and Surprises

A micro-fracture is an interesting surgery, simple yet elegant. The surgeon makes two small incisions, one on either side of the top of the ankle. They stick a camera in one hole and a scraper/vacuum tool in the other, using the tool to suck out all of the debris in the ankle including the cartilage from the surface of the joint. Once the cartilage is removed, the bone is exposed. They use a hammer and nail technique to create tiny holes in the section of bone that has died, micro-fractures. The body does the majority of the work in the eight-to-twelve weeks that follow the surgery. The cartilage must be re-grown, and the dead spot must re-vascularize to heal.

I had this surgery performed on my left ankle at the age of 16, the same day I got my driver’s license. I had dreamt of this day many times, of all that I would do with my newfound teenage freedom. I would go to brunch, then the beach with all my friends, and end up wherever the wind took me! Unfortunately, I had less than one hour to joyride before it was time to head to the hospital, and