It has been a while since this latest injury, a five weeks and 2 days to be exact. But I am happy to report that after the most recent podiatrist visit, I was given the all clear to attempt to start running again, nice and slow. And as any athlete can understand, once you've been injured the actual scariest part is getting back on your feet again. So here I am again, in the trial week of testing and waiting to see what will happen. Will my feet let me down and fall out from under me or this time will I arise stronger and more capable than before?
Test Run # 1: Monday
I decided the perfect day to start something new would be a Monday. It is the start of the week and should be the start of me trying to make my come back. And Monday cooperated admirably. It was a balmy 65 degrees outside so I ran in shorts and a long sleeve shirt (not all hyper layered up like normal). Unlike in previous runs, I had a plan for this run. I would only do 2 miles and I would run/walk it. I resolved to run for about 2-3 minutes and walk 1 minute. I promised myself to run nice and slow and take it easy on my foot. And let me tell you the best part about trial and error is the success part. Within a minute or two, I felt the "I'm back" sensation I know so well. But as if I have finally learned my lesson, I held back and walked when my 3 minutes of running were up. At first I felt some anxiety and pull on my heart strings to keep pushing forward and keep running, but for the first time, I just let that go. After 4-5 years of my running life, I stopped ‘yelling at the rain’ and accepted the fact that I must take my time and slowly build back up to fully recover.
The old me would have kept running because my foot was feeling good and strong and not hurting. But the new me was listening to the caring words of her boyfriend, family, and friends ringing in her ears. Their words cried out, 'its okay, this is scary, because all change is scary, and you want to be strong and invincible, but it's time to let go of that. It's time to grow up now. You don't have to hurt to be strong. You can be strong for just getting out there and trying.' Words will not do justice to how liberating that feeling was. So as a light breeze carried all of the weight I have been trying to carry around for all these years off my shoulders, I settled in to my second favorite feeling while running, simply just being. I watched the sunrise and listened to the birds chatting away as the town around me slowly woke up sleepy and cloudy-eyed. Before I knew it, I had hit one mile and it was time to turn around and head back to the pool for some water jogging. On the way back I encountered a hill I used to charge up and felt that pull to kick my quads and hams into high gear to power up that hill, but I held back. I held back so much that I walked up the hill. At the top of the hill I started trotting along again slowly and with a huge grin on my face. I rounded out my run that day at 2.3 miles and then hopped into the pool for a nice solid hour of water jogging. The joy was back and my foot felt fine. The best part? The next day and for 2 days after that, my foot still felt golden and I was happy.
Test Run #2: Thursday
I was very excited for my run today. I had been looking forward to running again since the 2 miler on Monday. Wednesday night, I went to bed around 9:45, but ended up staring at the ceiling for the better part of an hour. I thought about running and cheese (don’t laugh, I am reading a book called ‘The Cheese Chronicles’ - see my previous post on cheese) until my eyes got droopy and I drifted off. I woke up at 5:05 am to my phone prodding at my brain with its extremely loud, but effective alarm. I normally don’t need an alarm but for some reason today I did. That sluggish feeling followed me all the way up through my run. I am more than used to being tired and running anyway, but I had forgotten how it feels.
Once I started running, I could tell that my foot was healed. I don’t entirely know how I knew, but it was like my foot said, “Hey Emma, I’m definitely healed now. Still be gentle, but we can be a team again and start training for these races you have this year. You be nice to me, and I’ll do my part to help you out.” Yes, my foot clearly is as long winded as my brain. Surprise, surprise. So I was feeling pretty damn good, but I knew that if I didn’t take it easy, I’d be injured again and sidelined. So I stuck with the walk/run and walked 1 minute to every 3 minutes of running. I felt pretty good, until I hit the turn around and felt a very strong headwind slap me in my face. As with so many things in life, everything’s great while its easy but as soon as the going gets tough, you grow frustrated and annoyed.
I am not a patient person. It’s the one part of me that I would give anything to, and really try to, change, but I fail more times than I succeed. So as soon as I hit that headwind, my brain started in on it's negative self-talk that I hadn't heard for a little while (and frankly was getting quite used to/happy not hearing). I started thinking about the fact that despite that I was doing awesome just in the fact that I WAS ABLE TO run, I started thinking: “God, I’m going so slow. Jeez, only 2 miles, you used to run 10+ miles easily and now look how much you have to build back up. You’re such a lame-ass.” Everyone is there own worst critic right? Well, I started to feel really down and before I could pull myself back up my my bootstraps, I had finished my 2 miles. Trying to salvage the good mood feeling I had at the beginning of my run, I checked my stats (as recorded on my phone) and was pleasantly surprised. Somehow even with the walk/run, I was only doing 11:30 minute miles. My comfort pace for slow runs always hovers around 10 minute miles and my race pace is sub-9:30s. I know that that’s not that fast, but I am okay with that because it is what works well for me. But seeing that I only was loosing a minute or two was uplifting, because I can work with 2 minutes. I can bring that time back down again with some solid smart training. So I stretched out by my car, feeling better in general and then headed into the pool.
The important lesson I learned from these two runs was that sometimes you have to take the little things and just let go of the things you can’t control. I know the road to recovery this time around will be a long one, but I will recover. Happy runs folks! :)
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