A Passion for Running

I RAN today! Wahoo! Yippee!

Man, it’s been hard to not run. I think I have a BIT of an idea now what Aaron’s been going through. It is very depressing not to run at all.

First, before I tell you about my run and the “canine illumination”, here’s an update on the ol’ foot thing I’ve been dealing with. In the beginning, I thought it was an arch problem. In the second week I realized the pain/discomfort was located just below the inside ankle bone just above the arch and that the pain was actually radiating down into the arch and around the ankle. I did some icing and stretching this past week or so and it’s been getting better and better. However, this past few days it hasn’t seemed to improve much. The battle this past while certainly has been within: To run too early was to risk making the injury worse. To not run was to send me careening toward insanity.

My latest goal was to start running yesterday but a lunch meeting interfered and, quite frankly, I don’t think I would have gone anyway – the ankle just didn’t feel right.

There’s no doubt I’ve been depressed and this morning was really bad. Not running into my third week really got to me this morning. Even though my ankle didn’t feel any better than yesterday, I resolved to TRY running. The deal I made with myself was if it hurt badly after 10 minutes, I’d walk back to the gym and for sure go see a doctor.

I got out there at lunch time starting out very gingerly. The first five minutes felt awkward – especially in that ankle but at least there wasn’t any pain. For sure there was discomfort but no pain. After ten minutes of running, I had a very small amount of pain. Very small so I kept going.

To make a long story short I ran for 30 minutes! The ankle doesn’t feel quite right but I’m sitting at my desk feeling no worse than before the run. In fact, it feels a bit better probably due to the increased blood flow.

So, now for my bit of canine illumination…

Last night I did some reading on ankle injuries. It wasn’t long before I became convinced what I have is some form of sprain. I see evidence of this when I experience pain pointing my toes inward or rolling outward on my ankle.

This kind of injury is not common among runners. It is more common among people who play sports involving a lot of lateral movement (e.g. basketball players, volleyball players and maybe people who run/hike on rough terrain).

So, during my run today, I started wondering how I got a sprained ankle during the marathon? After all, it’s all straight ahead running right?

WRONG! Well, it wasn’t for ME anyway. Do you remember in my race report where I mentioned that lady and her dog crossing in front of me and the fact that I tripped over the dog and almost fell down? Eureka! Yes, you got it. When I tripped over the dog I also rolled over my ankle. THAT’S where my injury happened.

So there you have it – canine illumination.

I think I’m back. All I have to do is take it a bit easy and do my best not to roll over on that ankle.

Yabba-dabba-doo!