For better or worse, my approach to dealing with niggles during recovery has been to run through it, because boy have there been niggles. I feel like if I stopped running with each and every one, I’d never be able to build back to full strength!
Luckily, that approach seems to be working (for the most part) with the extensor tendon pain. That pain is largely gone. But in loosening my laces, my foot ended up slipping around in my shoes, giving me a giant blister on the ball of my foot. That’s obviously less than ideal, because the ball of your foot is something that is impossible to avoid.
I ran through that blister (and a couple other blisters that formed on top of that blister), but in the process irritated my peroneal tendon (the tendon running up the side of the calf and around the bony part of the ankle bone).
On my run this morning, though, my blister felt fine (aka no new blisters formed on or around it), my extensor and peroneal tendons felt fine … but I got some more phantom pains (hopefully!) in my old injury spot! It never ends!
If I’ve learned one thing this year, it is don’t get injured!
Injury recovery is longer and more tiresome than I could have ever expected. Of course, I had been injured before, but never injured to the point where I couldn’t run for three solid months and therefore had to start from scratch…or at least not at a point in my running life where I had so much I wanted to do and to accomplish.
I know I pushed myself in my initial recovery, because I didn’t want to let my friends down and drop out of Ragnar, and I know I’m perhaps pushing myself now with speed work, but I just so badly want to been back in the shape I was in in the fall. I want to test my limits and see how much better I can do and the waiting is killing me.
I know I’m probably not alone in this frustration. Have any of you had to deal with a long recovery process? How long did it take you to feel like you were at 100% again and back in shape? What did you do to hold yourself back and stay sane?
PRs & Chocolate Bars 