What do you do when can't do what you love to do?

First post in absolute ages and it's to have a self-pitying whine. ;-)


I'm having real problems with my running at the moment in that chronic back trouble is making it incredibly hard for me to train to anywhere near my potential.

Yes, I can still go out for shorter runs and enjoy them (after a fashion) but my sciatica constantly undermines my ability to do the longer runs that I need to do to train for ultras. Every day I'm thinking that if I wasn't a runner, my symptoms would be quite bearable and then I feel guilty for aspiring to something that most people wouldn't even dream of doing. It's not like I'm seriously disabled in the conventional sense of the word but and many folk would be grateful to have my present level of fitness, such that it is. Life would be a whole lot simpler if I wasn't a runner!

It's just that I so want to run next year's WHW race and while I know it's a long way off, this back trouble has grumbled on and off for months and months. It put paid to my plans to do the TDS earlier this year when I was forced to accept that there was no way I could put in the appropriate training to do justice to a course like that.


On the immediate horizon I have an entry for the Devil o' the Highlands race which is in August. I would love to run it but I'm having serious doubts about attempting it. It's not that I'm too worried about running with my pain (I've been doing that for ages) but that I know that I just can't get the training done that I'd like to do to run it "properly". I've never been a great fan of just achieving a finish for the sake of it.

I've seen my own physio who has given me mobilisation exercises to do for my lower spine but they've made no difference. I'm currently waiting to see an NHS physio so I suppose I should see what they can do. Although highly sceptical of surgery as a treatment for back pain my symptoms are very specific (single nerve root pain) and I'm beginning to wonder if that's the route I might eventually have to follow.

If any runners out there have been down the surgery route and have any comments they'd like to make, I'm all ears.