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.

Yesterday was another happy beautiful wonderful day! Again with the 15 seconds running (ok, I probably squeeked out 20) to 1 minute walking. Ankle felt great, some ache at the end but iced again and no prob. Today I did 20 reps and the soreness never even came on until the last half mile, which was really just the cool down walk. I had less of the initial fear that my ankle was just going to spontaneously explode or shatter like glass or something and was able to concentrate on picking up my feet and lengthening my stride just a bit so that I wasn’t so much timidly shuffling along. Running in better form, even for 15 or 20 seconds, made alot of difference.

I can’t believe I’m running! It felt like it would never happen and now here it is!! I would love to hang onto this feeling - wouldn’t it be great, 5 years from now, to be lacing up some frigid winter morning and being all like, “I can’t believe how great this is, I’m so lucky, I’m so happy, I can’t wait to run!!”

Yes yes, so I’ve been walking walking walking and it has been good.

Today I ran.

Now before the fanfare begins, it was only for 15 seconds to every 1 minute walking - but it was running and it could have been flying (well, slightly less graceful than flying) for as good as I felt doing it. I did the sequence of 15 sec/1 minute 15 times as well as about 15 minutes warm up/cool down walking. By the end, my ankle was aching some but not enough that I needed to favor it at all. I iced it upon arriving home and it feels fine now.

As conservative as 15 seconds sounds, I’m happy with it. Maybe I am too skittish, I don’t know - but I’m willing to totally err on the side of caution because I can’t even describe how devastated I’d be if I exacerbated this injury again and ended up off the trail for another 3 months!! If all goes well and I’m feeling wild, maybe I’ll jack it up to 30 seconds by Saturday - that’ll be my long run for the week

Begin at the beginning…

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson