...but it caught me here...
Yes, my loyalties turned
Like my ankle in seventh grade
Running after Billy...
Sorry. I was just thinking about my change in running habits after all these years, and the title that came to me is from a Tori Amos song called "Precious Things" that has nothing to do with the subject of my post.
Maybe I should make non sequitor introductions my trademark, if I haven't inadvertently done so already.
I'm not sure what provoked me to step out but I did last week. I've been running steadily for years. Generally, I'm a five miler. I'm short and squat, so I've never been very fast. Moreover, I haven't bothered pushing myself. For me, it was enough to simply do it. Over time, I've built some stamina and a little bit of speed, but never really cared much if I didn't.
I've also built some joint pounding injuries. Nothing serious, and the knees are still in great shape. Remember the right heel injury I sustained in SOS? It's still with me. It seems to be a strained achilles after all. Of course, I certainly am not going to stop running for three to six months so it can heal. That's just simply out of the question. Due to sustained running on it, I developed pain in my left hip along the side.
A couple of months ago, I broke down and went to the doctor to have these checked out. Due to my favoring the heel, I gave myself a rather painful bursitis inflammation on the opposite side. Great. The doc gave me Vitamin M and told me to take three of them a day (800 mg!) until the inflammation went down, then to drop to one a day. Meanwhile, I was to stretch the offending calf muscles before I stepped out of bed in the morning. (Try training yourself to do this with four animals in the house all vying for food and to go out in the mornings.)
* Dave...this is the military way of saying "Motrin"; they prescribe it for everything from a headache to severed limbs, I think.
I was a good girl and did the stretching for, oh, over a week before that part played out. I almost immediately dropped to one Motrin a day, which still seems excessive. I quit taking them after about three weeks because I just didn't like putting all that anti-inflammatory in my body. I decided to just suck it up and deal with the pain, and take a Motrin and do an ice pack if it got too bad. Call me old fashioned.
The biggest pain of it is the first thing in the morning when I step out of bed (which is why the doc told me to take the time to stretch it first, which I admit helped). Apparently, I was restraining it every morning because I was putting weight on a pulled tendon without warmup of any kind, which was exacerbated by the fact that feet tend to extend in repose, so the muscle was cold and tight when I rolled out of bed.
Well, it hasn't been bad lately. I've been running regularly. Occasionally, I take a day off because the heel just hurts. Then there's the occasional inexplicable bout of fatigue while I'm running (something I'm using diet control to deal with, with almost immediate success).
Last week, I had taken two days off and felt spunky. I left my MP3 player in the gym bag and stepped out into a cool morning with gentle rain and started running. I went faster than I normally do. Sometimes, I'll start off faster when I'm fresh and feel like it, but I generally slow down after a bit and jog comfortably. For some reason, I didn't that morning. I ran the entire distance at a faster pace. It had two wonderful affects I noticed almost immediately: I was invigorated instead of fatigued by the exertion--I swear, I felt 30 again--and my heel didn't hurt.
My heel didn't hurt the next morning, either. My muscles were a bit sore, but that's all good. That's the way it's supposed to work. I ran the next day at the same pace, but stopped to walk a few times because I didn't want to push myself too much at this point, although I felt like I could have done it had I wanted to. Again...no heel pain. No hip pain, either.
I ran on a treadmill at the gym last night, as it was wet and dark and rainy. I did 4 miles in 34 minutes, which isn't a shabby time for a sustained mile.*
* All times are relative. In this case, my "good" times are relative to my average times.
I don't think I'm going to give my boss a run for her money (she did her 1.5 mile run in 10:44 last year when she returned from deployment and was "out of shape"),* but it's good enough for me that I'm improving my own performance.
* And I'm going to work for another runner. Col Harrington, my gaining commander, was a marathon runner pre-children. I don't know if she still runs, but she certainly appears as though she could if she wished.
Or, as James Brown put it, I FEEL good....
d
