Another Real Run! 46:20

Thursday, July 19, 2007

It was nifty to make contact with Em 

She's a runner from Australia who got a stressie close to the time I landed mine. Her blog is pretty funny and her fight to keep fit and stay sane was so much like mine.

Wynn suggested it might not be a bad idea to look into orthotics in case my stressie was a result of bad mechanics. So this morning I saw SG at Cedar Hill Sprts Therapy to get a consultation. I told him right off the top that I was leery about putting orthotics in my shoes since up until now, I haven’t had any other joint or muscle problems stemming from running. After he looked at my alignment he said my left foot moves more laterally than my right when I toe off. I apparently toe off from the centre of that foot instead of from the big toe with the foot rolling through on a diagonal. Other than that I didn’t have any major alignment problems from what he could see with the few short drills he had me do. He gave me an exercise that may help direct my toe-off better so I’ll give that a whirl. We also talked about why the stress fracture happened and like most people I spoke to, he said it could have been a number of things and we’ll never really know why or how it happened. At this point, all I can do is monitor myself closely and watch for any warning signs that an injury is creeping in. I’ll see how training goes in the next couple of months and if I find that I am putting too much stress on an area that only an orthotic will fix, I will get them. He wasn’t at all pushy and took the time to answer all my questions. I am not so wary about them now! The best part was that he didn’t charge me for the consult! Good thing too…this injury has put me in the poor house…I don’t want to talk about it.

So what’s up with this weather? At least the skies cleared up in the late afternoon just in time for my run. I met the Fat One at UVic right after work and we ran on the trails there. It’s hard to believe I ran a 35 minute 10km in April…Where did that fit person go?! It would have been worse had I not cross-trained but despite my neurotic efforts I am no where near where I was before the injury. I knew about 4 weeks into cross-training, I was starting to loose the battle of maintaining that hard-core fitness you can only get from running (that’s when I started getting really grumpy) but there was only so much I could do and I feel I did the best I could. I am stronger, that’s for sure but it’s going to take a good 8-10 weeks of slowly building up base endurance and then another chunk of time to get some speed back. That’s ok, I am motivated and will get there in due time. I am not so confident I’ll be ready or as ready as I want to be for cross-country season but I can only progress as fast as my body will allow. Maybe I'll bounce back faster than I think...thought...thunk. I am just so happy to be running again. The runs are shorter and slower than I want them to be but at least I am out in the fresh air! Fortunately too, my foot is feeling normal and considering I haven't run in 9 weeks, the rest of this old body is responding decently. The plan is to continue to rotate between runs and cross-training and slowly add some distance and frequency without getting injured. Matty’s keeping me in check and I will watch for any signs of stress on my foot or anywhere else.

Tomorrow off, Saturday back in the pool (maybe do a repeat of last week's lake-water run of 2 sets of 8 x 2:30 with 30" ....or a cycle WO of 2 sets of 6 x 2 minutes) and on Sunday...I get to RUN!

Wow, long post…blah…blah… Well the day ended with dinner at Squintch’s prepared of course, by his Mom since he is still not able to even tie his own shoes! The meal was superb once again and we even got in a few rounds of Sequence. Don-Don was a pain in my side as usual. We nearly had to be separated.

one comment:

Wow, once again a post I could have written. What the heck causes a stressie? It will be a question for the ages, in my case calcium intake (or lack of) was a factor.

It is great to be running again though isn’t it! Though the next step, regaining endurance and speed is going to be fun, a bit like learning to walk again :-

Colour me impressed with your 10Km time! You would place very highly in our AV competition with times like that (AV = Athletics Victoria our state Athletics Body), in fact you would have placed 2nd or 3rd at our recent State 10Km championships
Em (email) (link) - 22 07 07 - 02:35