My Midweek Injury Report

For people who do not play fantasy sports, hump day is viewed as just another day at the office. However, for those of us who do partake in just frivolities as fantasy baseball or football, the day is highlighted by gasps of nervous angst as this is the day where the mid-week injury reports are published and released to the public. Since there are many among us who are unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of the sport, let me just say that the weekly injury report is the foundation on which all fantasy sports decisions are based upon. Only by analyzing and interpreting the information contained within those pages can we perform such menial tasks such as add/drop players, set our lineup for the week and evaluate trade demands/requests. Needless to say, this is somewhat of an important document for us fantasy sports junkies.

Sometime this week, as I was rehabbing my injuries and figuring out a racing plan for this weekend’s half marathon (I’m running the Newport City Half Marathon in Jersey by the way), I started to wonder what my entry in the injury report would look like if they actually had such a publication for runners and if I were a professional/elite that someone would care to read up on. I surmise it’d read something a little bit like this:

The Laminator – right iliotibial band (ITB), left Achilles’ tendon, questionable. This two-time NYC Marathoner and two-time Boston Marathon qualifier has been training with a tight right iliotibial band for much of the summer. He sustained the injury initially in early August during the 2008 San Francisco Marathon but it worsened significantly during early training for the upcoming New York City Marathon in November. He has made some small changes in his running mechanics, i.e. shifting to landing more on the forefoot, keeping hips lower and staying more perpendicular to the horizontal plane, in an effort to relieve as much pressure as possible on the source of the pain. These changes as well as purposeful stretching and massage before and after every run seemed to have temporized the pain, although he admits that it still hampers him quite a bit on the faster workouts.

More recently however, he has developed a case of Achilles’ tendonitis, which has forced him to miss two midday workouts and cut short a twenty miler weekend run two weeks ago. Unlike ITB, which can be managed somewhat conservatively, Achilles’ tendonitis is trickier to deal with because it tends to flare up at a moment’s notice. He will be hampered at the landing and push-off portions of the gait cycle. On the positive side, he has been able to make it through practice for the past week and all indications point to a fast run this Sunday at the half marathon. Just don’t be surprised however if you tune in to the race late and find him not among the starters toe-ing the line. In other words, he's at best a game-time decision. Have a substitute ready just in case!

Yeah, that would be mine…if I were to have an injury report.