FOR YEARS MYSTERIOUS LEG PAIN KEPT ME FROM RUNNING . HERE'S HOW I HEALED IT- AND CAME BACK STRONGER THAN EVER

SIX YEARS AGO I WAS A RUNNER WHO COULDN’T RUN ANYMORE-The author had said been a runner his whole life. Then out of nowhere, he was sidelined.

- CHRIS SOLOMON

The author had said been a runner his whole life. Then out of nowhere, he was sidelined.

This happened overnight. One day I ran, the next day I could not. Each time I tried, cramps fierce enough to tear muscle bloomed in my calves after only a few blocks. Even when my legs were at rest, cramps knotted toes, locked up arches. This was baffling. Specialists poked and prodded me. A sports medicine doctor ordered blood drawn and spun. A podiatrist fashioned new orthotics. Each of them shrugged. No one had any idea what was wrong. One guy told me to sleep with a bar of soap beneath my feet, invoking an old wives’ tale. A physical therapist , what I really needed was a sports psychologist to. deal with my frustration. I nearly punched him

I had run since the age of 7. On the day the calves seized up, I was 45. I was no gifted athlete—a few marathons here and there, never a podium finish at any distance, not even the local turkey trot. But speed was never the point. After four decades, running was no longer simply something I did; it was a piece of who I was. I liked the places running took me. I liked the way running made me look—leaner, younger than my age, and more like my father, a runner before me. Mostly I liked the way it made me feel. I had crossed life’s halfway point, and in so many ways was not the man I thought I would be—not as successful, as witty, as well read. But each afternoon when I busted out the door, a low-rent Mercury galumphing around Seattle’s Green Lake at junior varsity speeds, none of that mattered. I was happy.