“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.
“Those you see there,” answered his master, “with the long arms; some of them have them well-nigh two leagues long.”
“Look, your worship,” said Sancho. “What we see there are not giants but windmills.”
“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”
— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter VIII
Today I ran 30 minutes without pain, and while that may sound like a small feat it represents something much more to me.
Running was my refuge. In university I ran down endless country roads to sample the wind and sun and ease the angst I carried day to day. During my internship in Hawaii, I would run through the rainforest and up the mountain, my body taking me on extended journeys of inspiration and restoration. From the top of the ridge I could look out on the valley, the city, the ocean beyond it, and gain perspective.
Toward the end of my time in Hawaii, I noticed a “glitch” in my lower leg where suddenly I had to stop running to make it home. I figured some rest would help and I’d get back to it. I left the warmth of Hawaii for the Green Mountains of Vermont to continue my medical training. The nagging injury followed me and kept getting worse.
Over the next twenty years I found relief through rest, occasional physical therapy and massage, but upon my return to running things would eventually fall apart again. I was slowly recognizing a significant barrier: there was an 18-year-old still living in my head. If I felt good, the voice would say push the tempo. If I was running uphill and feeling my legs burn, let her go, a bit faster. If I felt pain, don’t slow, it will ease, mind over matter.
Eventually, despite my hopes and denial, my body would in fact matter. Shit, is that foot drop?! I would call my wife to pick me up and after the third or fourth time she cautiously said, “You know Michael, maybe running isn’t for you anymore?”
As I settled into life in Canada with a new job and three young children, my world contracted toward the needs and obligations of work and home. My identity as a runner faded and became something I used to do. I would see people half as athletic and older than me running down the sidewalk and I would feel jealous.
One year ago on a family vacation in Costa Rica, I somersaulted off a surfboard into shallow water and landed on my head. The force broke two vertebrae and drove C6 forward over C7, leaving me millimetres from paralysis. Emergency surgery went well, and as I recovered, the gnawing grief I had carried for years about running resolved into gratitude for movement and a desire to get back to it.
I found a kinesiologist and he built an ambitious plan: intervals, long runs, weights, six days a week. The familiar pain in my left lower leg was gone, but new pain took its place, shifting day to day through my neck, hip, calf, Achilles, low back, and hamstring. I assumed that running with pain was my new normal. A few weeks in, while I ran up a hill with my 18-year-old self still inhabiting my mind, that younger voice said: you are doing great, it’s a privilege to run, pick up the pace. I listened, and with a sense of joy and exertion I lengthened my stride. Then my hamstring twinged, then tightened, and a few minutes later it pulled. It kept me off the road for weeks.
A couple of months ago I got back on the treadmill, still feeling the aches I knew could unravel at any moment. Then I stumbled upon Tommy Rivers Puzey, a trainer on iFit. I started the first run of his six-week Costa Rica 5K series. As I chased him on the screen of my treadmill, he looked back at the camera and said, “If you haven’t done my Foundation Series, you need to stop what you are doing and meet me there.”
I didn’t want to listen. He looked back again. “Are you still following me without building your foundation? You must do the foundation series to prepare your tendons, ligaments, and bones before you do this one. If you haven’t done that you are going to injure yourself. You need to turn off this program and start there.”
Twenty years of pushing too far had carved a pattern that, in hindsight, was painfully obvious. As Charles Kettering once said, “failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement.” I had plenty of finger posts, and it was finally time to read them. I decided to listen.
His foundation program started with short runs interrupted by walks. He asked me to be patient. “It may not feel like you are doing anything but we are slowly building and strengthening the structures that are needed for you to move on to the next step.”
He held me back from pressing on too hard. He taught me that you build a foundation slowly, layer by layer, and that consistency matters more than effort. Each day he would welcome me back: “This session shouldn’t be hard. It doesn’t need to be hard. You are just putting in the distance and time to prepare for your next challenge.”
Day by day, week by week, he slowly increased the duration of the runs and shortened the walks. I could feel my body coming back into alignment, and I was running without pain. No special stretching routine, no massage, no tactics beyond consistency, patience, and trusting the method.
Tommy learned this the hard way. A stress fracture years ago forced him to stop running, and in rebuilding he discovered that patience, incremental gains, and time for recovery produced higher fitness than his old rigorous methods ever had. He framed it as building the car before racing it: you don’t put a Ferrari engine in a VW Bug because the suspension, the tires, the chassis all need to be built first.
In 2020, an aggressive pulmonary lymphoma nearly killed him, requiring months of life support and a medically induced coma. He had to learn to walk again, but he already knew how to rebuild. He crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2022.
He doesn’t know me, but his life and his coaching were reshaping mine. Twenty years of repeated injuries and the gratitude that came from recovering from my neck had prepared me for his message.
Six weeks later I earned my way back to the 5K Costa Rica series with Tommy. Yesterday I was running along a beach that could have been the one where I had fractured my neck. Sancho saw windmills. Don Quixote saw giants. To anyone watching, thirty minutes on a treadmill is just running toward a windmill, but I had battled a giant and won. I felt my stride and breath fall into rhythm, and with it the joy of childhood, the relief from angst, the perspective of the mountain ridges, and the gratitude that comes from almost losing so much. These are the giants we run with, and I am so grateful.
Michael Mindrum, MD FRCPC