The Dreaded Achilles Heel

The Sugar and Spice is less than two weeks away and I am plagued with an overuse injury. It started with a funny feeling a couple of weeks ago in my achilles and last Thursday after an 8 mile run with the Starbucks group I found myself in a great deal of pain. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for keeping up with the 8 min. pace for 8 miles, but the pain didn't seem to go away. I iced and took an anti-inflamatory with little relief. By the end of the day it was feeling much better, but I decided not to run all weekend. I ran on a trail Monday and it felt fine, but tried to run with the Starbucks group Tuesday and made it about 1 mile before having to turn around. Bummer!

I decided it was time to see the doctor and get some physical therapy. So I went on Thursday to sports medicine at UK and physical therapy. Both appointments took 4 hours out of my day! Yikes. Hopefully it wont always take that long. Neither the doctor or the physical therapist thought it would be a horrible idea for me to the S&S. I was actually really surprised and relieved by that. I still haven't decided whether or not to do the race. I am a little afraid it might put me out of running for months and I don't think that is worth it for one race.

What went wrong??? I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. Why did I get injured? My plan after the marathon was to swim and bike more and run less to avoid an overuse injury from running. I followed this training plan well. I failed because I think I overestimated my ability to recover from the marathon. I thought one week was more than enough time off. I also ran 2 marathons within 5 months and before September 2005 I had never run more than 13 miles at one time, and would have never called myself an endurance athlete. As much as I like to think that I am invincible I have realized that I am not and I need to start taking better care of my body. I guess my "vow to get stronger" was too little too late.

I am using this injury as a learning tool. If I am able to do the race then good for me, but I'll know never to try to run an ultra one month after a marathon. If I am unable to even do the race, same message but it might strike me even harder. For now I will bike, swim, and run as much as I can and stay completely pain free. Right now that's only a couple of miles at a time. Hmmm... 32 miles sure is a long way...