Stress Fracture Recovery: Alex McDonald, Team Timex Triathlete and Doctor

Team Timex triathlete and doctor Alex McDonald noticed some pain in his hip while running about a year ago. After a few months, he went in for an MRI and discovered that he had a stress fracture in the neck of his femur, a serious injury that required him to stop running entirely. Read on to learn more from Alex about Team Timex and the importance of taking care of yourself!

"Last May I started to develop some pain in my hip while running and even walking, so I decided to take a week off... At the beginning of July I realized that something was very wrong.  After a couple visits to the doctor and an MRI, I discovered that I had a stress fracture in the neck of my femur, just below the hip joint.  To say the least, this was a pretty serious injury which required me to stop running for 8 weeks.  I was still training in the pool and to some extent on the bike, but nothing very intense."

"After a 2 month 'mid-season break' I very gradually started running and doing other physical activities.  I continued working with a physical therapist throughout the process to alter some biomechanical issues that were the main reason for the injury. It was a very mentally frustrating process, but I knew the long term repercussions would be far worse if I tried to force myself too soon.  As a result, I spent the entire summer getting healthy and healing slowly.  Because of the length of time it took to heal, my coach and I decided that it was best to not race again in 2009 and give myself the whole off-season to properly heal and build back my fitness."

Now fully recovered, Alex is working on getting back into racing. "At this point I am healthy and feeling very good.  It is only April so I am by no means in top fitness, but I am very happy with where I am given the off-season.  I started my season at California 70.3 in Oceanside which will be followed by New Orleans 70.3.  After that, the main focus for the first part of the year will be Ironman St. George in Utah; I’m really looking forward to the new race!  After that, things become a little less clear because the rest of the season depends on my race and results at St. George."

His results at St. George aren't the only factor adding uncertainty to Alex's schedule this season! "My wife and I are expecting our first child in July, so that will certainly make things interesting in the middle of the summer.  I plan to see what happens and keep things flexible as far as my racing schedule."

Alex plays a unique role on the Timex team as an athlete and a doctor, helping his team mates to realize when it might not be such a great idea to push through an injury of their own rather than take a break from training. "The Timex Multisport Team is full of extremely talented and intelligent individuals and everyone brings unique and valuable qualities to the team.  My professional experience as a physician, as well as my personal experience as a coach and athlete, places me at a unique crossroad between the sport and medicine worlds.  I am able to take concepts and ideas from one world and 'translate,' if you will, to help make them more accessible to the other.  I also work to help bridge the gap between the two mentalities.  For example, high-level athletes often want to push through discomfort or injury while a physician will often recommend that an athlete in this position stop training completely to let the injury heal properly.  This can create tension in the physician-athlete relationship.  I, however, am both an athlete and a physician and can wear either or both hats when required."

Alex is able to apply his knowledge of both medicine and sports not only to Team Timex, but also to other teams outside of the triathlon world. "Furthermore, as a result of my position and education, I was invited to serve on the Timex Performance Center Advisory Board in collaboration with the New York Giants football team.  This has been another tremendous opportunity to act as a liaison between medicine and sports. I really enjoy my role as a Timex Multisport Team member, as well as being a part of the triathlon and fitness worlds."

In addition to working with Team Timex and the New York Giants, Alex enjoys using TrainingPeaks to work with his coached athletes as well as with his own training. "As some say, 'what gets measured, gets done.'  TrainingPeaks is an invaluable tool for an athlete, or an athlete’s coach to track and gauge fitness progress over a long period of time.  In addition to using it as the main line of communication with my athletes, I also use TrainingPeaks personally when I work with my own coach, especially since the program is compatible with the Timex Ironman Race Trainer and the new Timex Ironman Global Trainer."

"There are a large variety of different tools and functions built into TrainingPeaks that help make this process fast, smooth and accurate.  Personally, I have been using TrainingPeaks for 4 seasons now and have an invaluable amount of data that I can refer to at any time to help guide my training and racing.  Additionally, because it is an Internet-based system I can easily update data from all over the world from any computer, no matter where I am training or racing.  This was especially helpful when my computer crashed last year and I lost all my data, but my training information was all sitting safely on the TrainingPeaks server, ready for me to download."

Learn more about Alex and Team Timex on the team blog at teamtimex.timexblogs.com.