out for 3 months major injury, how long will it take to recover full fitness

I have been sidelined since the start of October with fractures to the Sacrum and left and right Pelvis. I cant even cycle so fitness is plummeting. I am told I should be able to start up again new years day. I have a 250K 1 week ultra on march the 2nd. That would leave me 7 weeks training and 2 weeks taper. Can it be done?

Just before the injury I completed a PB marathon (Sep 30th). I believey fitness could have taken me on an 80k run. I had done a 65k race a month or 2 earlier.

But in 3 months will I lose absolutely everything? I really want to do this other race and am motivated enough to push myself and I am aware coming back rapidly has injury risks. But risks aside, could the fitness be regained in those 7 weeks?

 

Questions.

How did you get smashed up?

Why do you assume because you've been told you can start up, that you can start up?

You really need to get some perspective. At the moment you're less able than my mother who's one step out of a wheelchair, and you're desperate to run 250k.

Get yourself healthy first and then talk ultras. 

i got a stress fracture of the sacrum through running and it seems that the pelvic fractures came shortly afterwards, porbably when i switched to a lot of cycling because i couldn't run. it took 6 weeks before i got the correct diagnosis (after pursuing my own private mri scan). so during that time i was doing all sorts of things that didn't help.

i appreciate what you say about getting healthy first, its good advice. but the thing is this ultra is booked and paid for. flights, vaccinations the lot and i really wanted to do it. the people that read the mri seem to think it should be healed by the end of the year. i would get a new scan before attempting to resume running.

so sitting on my bum these days i am doing a lot of thinking and asking myself a lot of questions. the main one being, is it possible?

Crikey! I wondered if you had been hit by a truck.

From a running point of view the source of the injury is a problem.

Overuse injuries; which this appears to be, are the real show stoppers, as the activity that causes the injury is the same as the activity of choice.

Its unfortunate there has been a financial outlay involved, but unless putting one foot in front of the other for several hours while staring at the ground is your only interest, you could still take the trip as a tourist.

One advantage I had over my exercise addict associates was having interests that didn't involved running or even moving about. Fishing and bird watching to be precise.

An overuse injury was clearly a case of getting the rods out.

Is it possible? hard to tell.

Personally, anything that dealt me such grief would be something to avoid.

Robot, jeez! I've never done an ultra so that is a world beyond my imagination. But I have had injuries - not your injuries, but I know that doing the same thing again that made you et your injury in the first place is not a good idea. Basically, I second ricF.

Sounds as though you are very determined to do it. Maybe it isn't impossible. But, I know from doing 'just' a marathon undertrained that I wouldn't put ,yself through it again as it's too painful and there is no sense of achievement doing so badly at something.

I suppose you might need to ask yourself (and a medical professional - poss one that isn't going to make money out of you if it all goes tits up) : if it does go tits up when you do the 250k, are you prepared to have the possibility of even worse injuries and even more time out?

Whatever you do, hope it goes well. Take up knitting.

I've no idea.  But I'll add my voice to those saying DON"T DO IT (even though I've no medical training!)

If you love ultras, if you love the challenge...  then you have to miss this one - so that you're properly healthy to pick them up again next summer.

Did your medic HONESTLY say you could start again on 1 January?  Or did they say..  'see how it goes'   And when they said 'start up again'  - do you really think they expect you to be back into running scores of miles a week within a month?

As Ric says... this being a running stress injury just makes it all 10 times worse.

Play the long game. Sit this one out.

thanks for the replies.

run wales its true they didnt say 'you can start again' on jan 1st just like that. they simply looked at the fractures and estimated a healing time which is about that date. if the bones are healed they are good to go and there are many things I can adjust in training to avoid that kind of injury again.

kaffeeg that makes sense but i wouldnt want to arrive for this ultra half trained in the first place. so although i might sound slightly mad and over devoted, i am actually thinking carefully along the lines of, if, and only if, i was completely healed come jan 1st, could I get back to full fitness in that time frame (accepting there is a risk of other injuries due to building up mileage rapidly). i was just about there with the fitness at the end of september. does a person lose everything in 3 months? is there a rule of thumb out there? i.e. 3 weeks off requires 2 weeks to get back to where you were etc

No you don't lose everything but you do lose something.

There's a runner I know who was stopped completely for six months. Despite my own training being better than ever, he caught up and surpassed my level in only six weeks from starting up again. Six weeks later he was only 5 seconds per mile off his best.

So it can be done. But that also depends on what 'it' happens to be.

Lots of runners get an injury when super fit. They fall into the trap of thinking they are still super fit when in fact they have a condition that renders them fit for nothing.

The sequence of training is:

1.Health, 2.conditioning, 3.fitness, 4.race fitness.

You are still dealing with 1. But you want to hop straight to 4.

Its risky. And 9 times out of 10 doesn't work.