How do You Deal with Your World Falling Apart?

It’s approaching mid-April as I write about this issue that started at the end of December. I’m still somewhat shocked and maybe in a state of disbelief that this issue is still ongoing. I never expected that after over three months I would still be grasping hope that things are still going to improve. It all started with a long drive, about fifteen hours each way from New Jersey to Iowa and back. I usually feel some back pain after spending a long time in the driver's seat, but it’s completely resolved after a day or two usually. This time it was different. Confounding the problem, I also had a slip on the ice while ice skating that tweaked my back between the two stretches of the drive. Even with all that, the back pain didn’t affect my running. My back hurt and I struggled to put on my socks, but running didn’t aggravate it. My plan was to start training seriously in January for this year’s races and I wasn’t going to let a little back pain get in the way of that. Everything started well. I ran seventeen miles on New Year’s Day, six miles on the second, and twenty miles on the third. Unfortunately, that’s when everything came crashing down. About halfway through my twenty mile run, I caught my toe on a root, nearly did a superman fall, and again tweaked my back. After that, it was brutal to run. Maybe against my better judgement, I pushed through the pain and finished the last ten miles of the twenty I wanted to get in that day. I thought even if it hurt during the run, it would feel better tomorrow. I was ridiculously wrong.

The next day my back was screaming just from walking. I realized I’d have to take some time off from running; I just had no clue it would be this long. After a month or so of rest, home remedies, and not a huge improvement, I finally decided to go to the doctor. After an x-ray and a lower back strain diagnosis, he gave me a prescription for steroids and physical therapy. Flash forward another 6 weeks or so to today and I have been discharged from physical therapy and much better than where I was. However, there is still discomfort and I have not really put to the test how recovered I am. My longest run since the injury at this point was sixteen miles and my longest back-to-back runs have been two days of twelve mile runs. It’s a huge improvement over where I was in January when I cut the 1.4 mile morning dog walk to 0.25 miles because the pain was so bad, but I’m still not back to where I want to be.

I’ve thought a lot about what this all means for my running habit over the last two months. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve had so many questions and worries: How long will this take to get better? Will this be a recurring injury? What if I can’t run ultras anymore? I’ve tried my best not to let it affect the other aspects of my life, but when running has been such a big part of your life for so long it’s hard to not allow the emotions to bleed out into other areas.

So that’s where I am now: hopeful but uncertain of what the future holds. And I still haven’t answered the question that is the title to this post, “How do you Deal with Your World Falling Apart?” That’s because I don’t have an answer. I have found that I fall back to the two most common pieces of advice I give myself when things aren’t going well for me during a race.

The first being to continue forward progress. Whether it feels slow or pointless, just keep moving. I used this while working through this injury. First, home remedies then the doctor visit and finally trusting the process of physical therapy. All steps I had some skepticism about the value of, but they were something to move in the direction I wanted to go.

The second piece of advice is to grasp hope with everything. This situation has felt utterly hopeless to me at times. I’ve had thoughts that I may have to give up running altogether. Just like in an ultra, when those pessimistic thoughts hit at the lowest points, giving up not only sounds reasonable, it seems like the best possible outcome. It’s in those moments that if you can retain a bit of hope, you just may be able to come out the other side.

Scott Snell

9 April 2026