One Day at a Time

As Day 5 of my tibialis posterior sprain adventure dawned things seemed to have settled down nicely.  No calf pain at all and a slight pressure in my ankle is all that was left of the weekend's painfest.

As instructed - I ran for thirty minutes.

I was nervous about how it would go so I ran around my neighbourhood three times.  Meaning if things took a turn for the worse, I would never be more than five minutes from home.

I hobbled through the first few steps but that was probably as much from hesitation as from tightness.  Within a few minutes, things had loosened up and I felt a bit of pressure in my ankle but no pain.  So far so good.

The run was uneventful.  No dramatic collapse on the side of the road.  No screams of pain.  Just a slow easy run around and around and around the block.

Home, stretch, shower, dinner.

I actually felt good enough that I started thinking about Saturday's long run.

Then I stood up from dinner.  The ankle pain was back.  Nowhere near the pain from the weekend but I could tell things were far from healed.

*sigh*

Back on the couch I went.  Ice on my ankle, heat on my calf.

Apparently mild strains take a little more time to heal properly.

We'll see what Geoff says today but I'm guessing that this Saturday's 35k run won't be happening.  I had planned to run 35k four weeks out from race day to give my body time to recover.  Looks like I may be running it three weeks out instead.  A little close for comfort but doable.

When one trains for a marathon, they need to have a plan.  For training.  For race day.  Once they have a plan, they have to be willing to allow life to happen.  Sticking to a plan no matter what can lead to disaster.  Flexibility is key.

I have the option of freaking out because my body won't let me stick to the plan.  Or I could listen to my body and give it the time it needs to heal.

Guess which option I'm going to choose?