Running In Place

Friday I cranked my running time up to a full 20 seconds! Interestingly, for that seemingly minimal increase my ankle did ache a fair amount more, mostly towards the end. However, once I stopped running/walking (18 reps) there was no residual soreness. The other thing I noticed was that the ankle felt fatigued, a little weak. That was motivation enough to plan a rest day on Saturday, which turned into a rest weekend as we had family visiting from out of town.

Anyway, when my ankle is fatigued, I also have a mental sensation that I am precariously close to twisting or turning it - that the muscles will just give way and I will lose balance and injure it in some traumatic way. Part of this is surely paranoia, and part is a response to the awareness of weakness there each time my foot hits the ground. All this is to say that I’m wondering if I should be wearing an ankle support when running - for physical support, and maybe for mental confidence. My misgiving is this: when I used to work in the hospital, some people needed to wear back supports for lifting the patients (the kind that wrap around the belly and lower back with the criss-cross suspenders). They were explicitly instructed to buckle the support belts in place only for the act of lifting and not wear them for normal activities of walking, sitting, etc. because the added support at unnecessary times caused a weakening of the particular back muscles that were meant to be protected - creating a dependency of sorts. Maybe I’m better off doing stretches and strengthening exercises and just being mindful on the trail and that will be the best thing. Maybe an ankle support would be helpful only for the times when it’s feeling fatigued and I’m feeling insecure about it. Maybe ankle supports don’t work a whit anyway. Dunno.

Righty, well the plan for tomorrow and the rest of the week is 30 sec/1 min, so we’ll see how that goes. I was surprised, and very pleased, that I wasn’t just a little bumming about my tired ankle on Friday. Truly, I was all ‘it’s cool, clearly I need a rest, it’s been a good week.’ God I hope I can hang onto that perspective!

On another note, I recently checked out a mess of 80’s compilation CD’s from the library - Awesome 80’s, New Wave 80’s, Hot 80’s Ladies. My Black Sabbath/Motorhead husband thinks he’s in hell and for some reason is not the least turned on by my robot dance.