September: Revival

   Picture the injury that would make you stop running for good. It's a mortifying image, and it's probably wrong. It won't be the heart attack, the shattered tibia, or the broken collarbone from tumbling face-first into an ice-glazed path. Millions of runners recover from these traumas with heartening grace. More likely, persistent, low-grade pain will do you in. The joy will be hounded from your workouts until you quit.

   Running, of course, is a lifelong seminar in pain management. Nags and afflictions emerge with diabolical unpredictability, always working against your goals and your age. Runners abide these tortures, not knowing much else to do about them aside from the primitive remedies of ice packs and rest. For all the miracles sports medicine brings to running, there's still a yawning gulf between ibuprofen and the scalpel for fixing pain.

   Chronic aches should worry you. It tells you there's something wrong with your body or with the way you run. Pray it's the latter. Over time, determined changes in your form can bring relief. A good coach will spot an overpronating step, the lack of leg lift, and other compensations and distortions in a glance. Better still, have yourself videotaped, but be prepared for a shocker: the image you think you cut while running rarely jibes with the ways you actually move.

   Bad form tends to fend off aches, not provoke them. Your shortened stride may quiet a burgeoning throb in your left hip; complaints from your ankles subside when you unwittingly shift your weight to the outside of your foot. As often as not, improving your form allows new agonies to flourish. So let them. They'll help you identify the true sources of your pain.

   New shoes can do mysterious wonders for aching body parts that sensibly should have no connection to how you're shod, whether it's a twinge in your hip or general soreness in your neck or lower back. Switching to softer terrain or cross training may vanquish pain by lessening the hammer-like impact of each step and by strengthening supporting muscle groups.

   These are old remedies; you've heard them before. And unfortunately, their magic is blunt. They often fail to salve the specifics and intensity of your sufferings. No, the sure cure for pain is a change in expectations. Recovery from running injuries is unfathomably slow. Even when you've had a week or two of splendid, pain-free workouts, the affliction can return with sudden vengeance. Don't be done in by your well-deserved optimism.

   Likewise, changes in your form or training program take an eternity to ease agonies. It defies logic and heavenly mercy that chronic pain should be so stubborn. And when it simply won't be vacated - when you've run out of solutions and heroic perseverance - your expectations about what you hope to accomplish from running will have to change. This is particularly bitter medicine for racers. But there's no fighting it. One way or another, you'll have to make peace with your body.