Mon: 7 miles
Tue: 6 miles
Wed: 0 – Day Off
Thu: 0 – Day Off
Fri: 0 – Day Off
Sat: 0 – Day Off
Sun: 0 – Day Off
Total: 13 miles
Ugh! An unlucky 13 miles on the week. I had hoped this ankle issue wouldn’t cost me much time, but so much for that. My first run on Monday actually went pretty well. I felt a little pain the first few steps, but for the majority of the run I didn’t really notice anything at all and thought maybe I was good to go. On Tuesday, however, I felt it a little more. It still wasn’t bad after the initial few minutes of getting warmed up, but it took longer to warm up than it did the day before and I knew that probably wasn’t a good sign.
I had a chiropractic visit after the run on Tuesday and was hoping maybe a few adjustments would help clear everything up. As it turned out, it basically had the opposite effect. I don’t think it made me worse, per se, I just think it clarified how bad the underlying issue was. I still think the exercises I started doing is what brought all this on, but my calcaneous, the bone in your heel, was completely locked up and had almost no movement whatsoever. This likely explains some of my chronic insertional achilles tendonitis in that leg but could also be part of the ankle issue. Regardless, in the process of loosening it up, one of the adjustments caused some serious pain in my ankle, and by the time I got home it felt the worst it had since everything started.
That left me with no choice except to pull the plug and wait for it to heal. As I type this, I’m still not quite 100%, but I’m feeling good enough that I plan on testing things out tonight. I’m hoping it will be good enough to hold up going forward and I can resume training, because if I can’t, I’m in trouble. Without any decent training for two weeks now, I’m sure I’ve lost a little fitness, and if I can’t get started again soon, I’m really going to start getting out of shape and my whole fall season will be compromised. That might sound a little overdramatic, but trust me, I know my body well, and in spite of having a big lifetime base I lose fitness quickly, at least when it comes to being able to run fast. I can make a return to running a decent volume in a fairly short period of time, but when it comes to the speed element of things, that goes away quickly and comes back very slowly.
So, there it is. As crazy as it might sound, this week will probably determine the next couple of months. If I’m able to resume training, then I should be able to get back where I was in a short period of time and still be able to do some good racing come late September and into October and November. However, if I wind up with another week off, then that’s all out the window. I’m sure I could still get back in semi-decent shape and hit a few races, but honestly I’m not interested. I’ve come to a point where I either want to be able to run my own standard of what I consider to be fast or not compete at all. I might post more on that later. For now, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that I can put this ankle thing behind me starting tonight. Stay tuned.
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