And it continues...

My calf has been feeling good.  I haven't felt any soreness or any twinges for a few days.  I wanted to give running a try yesterday in the nice weather, but I decided that another day of rest would be better.  I put off my run until this morning and after spending some time on my feet I decided it was time to try the calf.

I put on my calf sleeve and some running clothes and ventured out.  Things were feeling good and I went through the first mile without incident.  I was about a 1/4 mile into the 2nd mile and BAM!  There it was again.  I was paying attention to my stride, and foot strike and making sure my feet were off the ground quickly.  I stopped, I did a quick stretch and turned around to head for home.

The pain wasn't as bad as it has been previously.  In fact it doesn't even hurt as I sit here right now. Maybe that was the 4 Advil I took earlier though.  I iced it once I got home and a few hours later.  I'm gonna stop trying to stretch it out and will stop the use of my Strassburg sock for the remainder of the week since I am not sure it's even helping this issue.

I'll rest some more and we'll see how it's feeling this week.  The half marathon is on the 2nd.  I'm really worried that I won't be able to run it, or I will have to DNF.

We'll see. Now where's my ice pack?

Recovery can be a hard road

The one thing I dislike about my job is that at times it requires me to be on my feet for hours on end, wearing big clunky steel toed boots walking around construction sites.  This is also something I really like about my job, so I am torn when I need to rest my legs to help them recover but am stuck onsite walking.  I also don't like being stuck at a desk from 9 hours a day and presumably that practice causes tight muscles and could also be contributing to injuries in a very six-degrees type of way.  As a friend said "You're white collar job is sort of blue collar at times."  I believe the extra energy of walking all day led to my legs being tired, which altered my stride, which led to the recurrence of this injury.

Work's been rough lately.  My group is overtaxed right now which is a drastic difference from this time last year.  I am currently working a full day in the field and then working 2-3 hours a night on additional work.  There are too many construction projects and not enough bodies meaning no one is in the office to do work.  At least I get paid my standard rate for the extra hours.

I'm doing my best to help my calf along.  It's been living in a compression sleeve by day, a Strassburg sock by night, with ice in the morning and at night.  I'm also trying to get extra sleep after a few weeks with late nights out on weekends(why are there so many April babies?)

I hope to get some further sleep this weekend and maybe test the calf on a short run of 2 or 3 miles.  We'll see how it goes.

Until then...

So about the blog

I started this blog last year with the intention of writing posts to share between my Runners World Blog and here.  I got behind early and neglected this blog due to restrictions at work while I was able to update for Runners World.  With no export features for that blog I neglected to transfer them over until it was too late.  I hope to get in a better habit of updating this through my next training stint.

To make a long year very short:  I suffered from shinsplints for the majority of my training for my first marathon.  I managed to run it, it hurt and I finished in 4:02:01.  I took a few weeks off to recover,  I visited a podiatrist, spent a lot of money on orthotics and started slowly picking up my running in June in Nike Frees.   I started training for the Steamtown Marathon in July, ran an 8 race summer series of of short races 4k-10k and managed to run healthy until the beginning of September.  I suffered a non-traumatic ankle injury, that recurred and shut me down for almost 3 weeks and with the marathon on the 2nd Sunday of October I had no time to recoup and prepare.

I laid off until the ankle was behaving again, and then threw my efforts into a 30/30 challenge.  I ran 30 times in 30 days for at least 30 minutes.  I also started to incorporate runs in my new Vibram FiveFingers for 5-10 minutes at the tail end of my runs.  I managed 26 runs within 30 days.  My legs felt good.

I ran two more races before the end of the year, a 5 mile Turkey Trot and a 5 mile Snowball Run where I placed 2nd in my Age Group.  I took the majority of December off, enjoyed a few weeks of gluttony and picked things back up on New Years day in Boston with another 30/30 challenge.  I managed 27 runs through the month, including 2 5k races and came out feeling good again.  Another short week off and I started to train for my 2nd LI Marathon.  Training went well through February and going into March things were great as well.  I embarked on a 6 mile tempo and felt a pull.  I was 1.5 miles from home, no cell phone, and it was dropping into the 30s.  I slowly jogged home.  I immediately started icing, started Advil and hoped for the best.  I ended up taking a week off, I tried again and the pain returned.  I sought therapy, took off another week and tried again.  3 runs in and the pain returned.  I continued PT during 2 weeks off and managed to ease back into my running.  I had switched to the half-marathon instead of the full due to the lack of long runs.

All was well until yesterday when the same pain returned after a few weeks of good running.  I'm not sure why it returned, but my theory is something related to my form and my left foot being in contact with the ground for too long.  I felt sluggish through the run and suspect my legs were tired from being on my feet at work all that day.

I'm back to icing and taking Advil.  I'm also wearing my Strassburg Sock and using The Stick to loosen things up.  I'm going to lay off of running until at least the weekend and see how its feeling.

Such a bummer to be facing these setbacks again.