Returning from Injury

Almost every runner I know has gotten injured and I'm no exception. Since I began running regularly a little over 2 years ago I've experienced my share of sprained left ankles, plantar fasciitis, and pinched nerves. Typically I attempt to run through the injury and this has led to another. For example when I first started running 2 years ago, I got my first case of plantar fasciitis. I taped it and continued running because I was only 5 weeks away from my first marathon and then sprained my ankle.

The common doctor response for injuries is rest or more specifically RICE. I am usually been given exercises to rehab from the injury and during that time I am usually good about regularly completing the exercises. Then as soon as it stops hurting I stop doing the exercises. This time though I am determined to keep up with the exercises and recuperate from this most recent injury.

I have sprained my ankle before and know that I will always be susceptible to further injury but once again I return to running but this time I am going to attempt to prevent it. I am running the Goofy Challenge in January at Walt Disney World but I have decided the real goal is the Tobacco Road Marathon in March. I will attempt to run a 3:05 and qualify for the Boston Marathon.

A picture of me after the Louisville Marathon and a then PR of 4:13:12. Setting my sights on Boston.

Balance

Life is about balance and running is an important part of maintaining that balance for me. I run to release stress. I run to work out my problems. I run to get away from people. I run to meditate. I run to pray. Each run is not all of these things and yet sometimes I struggle to achieve just one of those things during a run.

Recently my life has been thrown out of balance due to a change at work and I have been trying for 9 weeks to regain some of that balance and finally feel like I am making some progress. This is finally allowing me to enjoy running again instead of simply thinking about everything I need to do.

I have also stopped scheduling races so far in advance as that was putting too much pressure on me to be ready for them instead of just enjoying the run. That is not to say that parts of the races weren't enjoyable or memorable; the 3 miles of continuous uphill in the Charleston 15 miler and the first time I've done a run that was not runnable for me at the Table Rock 15k stand out in my mind but even when I was racing I was thinking about everything through work I still needed to do.

My hope is that I am going to find a balance between work and the rest of my life and in my next post I'll let you know how it's going. I will also write about any other running topic that comes up.