Running Injuries are the Worst!!

Well, unfortunately I don't have much to report as far as training goes. I had restarted with the 21 day fix videos on Monday, but by the end of the day my shin was very sore again. I did the Total Body Cardio Fix and followed the modifier, so absolutely no jumping around. I enjoyed it greatly, but the pain that accompanied it, not worth it to keep going. That evening I was feeling very frustrated and extremely nervous about whether or not I was truly looking at shin splints or if it is a stress fracture. I messaged Brecka and she hooked me up with a number to an actual sports doctor.

Tuesday morning I had snagged up the only appt available before Christmas, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, and decided to lay low until then. It was a good choice. I was pretty sore the days leading up to it.

Thursday's appt didn't go how I thought. My shin was very sore that day. I expected terrible news, but tried to remain optimistic. Xrays were done and then lots of questions and an exam of my leg.

The poor doctor had no idea what he was getting into, that poor man. He started by looking at my left leg. I honestly for a minute thought... um wrong leg. And then asked him if he knew it wasn't that leg that hurt. He responded with an "I know, I gotta look at the healthy one first" to which I responded with "oh gee, that makes sense. I was about to ask to see your credentials!" Hahaha, poor guy, he glanced up quickly to see my wide grin! The intern he had in there kinda laughed too!

These shorts tho! My "parting" gift they said.

The exam continues on and he starts pushing on the shin bones and surrounding muscle asking me if anything hurt. He was pushing hard! My response... "No. No. No. Well, if you push hard enough, sure it hurts!!"

Where is my filter?!!!

Anyway, so we carry on and go through all the walk on your heels, walk on your toes, does any of that hurt? Now hop on your left leg. K, now hop on your right leg.

SCREEEEECH!!! Wait, what!!

I stood on my right foot and mustered up what I could before giving it a go, knowing it was gonna be bad. I barely got off the ground. One "hop". I couldn't do it. I wanted to cry. I knew that was a bad thing.

So here we sat discussing the differences between shin splints and stress fractures and how not being able to hop just "muddied" up my diagnosis. My spirits fell. My xrays were perfect he said, and he was about to call severe shin splints, until I couldn't hop.

Plan of action. Treat it like a stress fracture and take 6 more weeks off of running, or get an MRI and know for certain what we're dealing with and exactly how to treat it. So. I'm scheduled for an MRI at 6:00 this evening.

The frustrating thing about the appt is literally one day later. I could hop. I'm still sore. I've gone back and forth over whether to call and leave a message and see if he'll clear me for running, or just see this thing through, and know for absolute certainty. I think I'm choosing know for certain. Better safe than sorry.

I'm hoping like crazy I get the phone call before Christmas eve saying I'm good to go. It may be wishful thinking, but if I hope and pray hard enough, it can be my Christmas miracle!

How do you handle it when you get grounding injuries? What gets you through the dark days of not being able to be active the way you were, pre-injury?

Recommit to a Healthy Lifestyle

Today I'm recommiting. I may be able to run for long distances, and I can workout for any length of time, but I am not fueling my body in a respectful way. I'm not fueling it to perform the way I want it to. Garbage in, garbage out.

When I work I pick up my old bad habits. I was doing pretty well until work started again. It's not okay. Real life means being busy, but finding time to still take care of nutrition. So today I will do my best to stay on course for the next three weeks. I will put good foods into my body. I will be more strict than normal, but not exclusive, it is Christmas time after all. But I don't need to indulge all the time. A treat here and there is okay, but responsibility is necessary.

I know I'm completely out of control and for that reason I'm turning to a program that I've used a couple of times already, once successfully. The 21 day fix. I don't have the extra shakes and I never follow it spot on, but I eat much better when I follow the basic guidelines it provides and I get results when I do. If I want to have any hopes of lining up uninjured and healthy for the Phoenix half marathon at the end of February, this is where I really need to start. Following a training plan is the easy part. It's the stuff in between that's really going to make a difference for me.

You don't need a new year. You just need a new day. A renewed sense of responsibility. A reminder of what you're fighting for. As for me, I'm fighting for the best version of me!

Half Marathon Training Week 4

So this week's training looked quite a bit different. My shin is hurting pretty badly, and I'm doing my best to train as smartly as I can this time around. There are so many people who seem to be injured right now!! Why is that? What is happening? In my case, in the past, it was because I wasn't resting. I wasn't stretching. I wasn't taking good care of my muscles outside of just running them. I was pain free until I started this training program. I don't believe it's from the program itself. I still believe it's from beginning to swim again. However, after Monday's workout, I made a very difficult decision to rest this week. It was amazing foresight on my part!

On Monday I woke up not really feeling very well. My throat was sore and I had a headache. I decided to go ahead and swim anyway. It was a good workout. I did a quick warm up and then training called for 20 min of non stop swimming. Then I did a quick cool down as well. I did about half of the swim without stopping, but did need to pause for a brief minute to catch my breath a little. I'm not as strong a swimmer as I once was, and it was tough! I'll get there one day. I still wasn't feeling well when I got home, but figured I'd play it by ear for the following days. I spent the first part of the evening sewing my running skirt for the Hot Chocolate 15k!

Tuesday I was feeling a little bit better, but my shin was still hurting pretty badly. So despite my heart wanting to run, I knew I needed to rest. And so I did. What a difficult decision to make! Why is that so hard to do? Purposefully rest our bodies when they so desperately need it. What good comes of training and pushing through pain, not soreness, pain!! Why do we do this to ourselves? Instead of getting faster/stronger, we get tired/injured and run the risk of loosing out on not just a few days of training, but weeks and sometimes months in order to recover, and then we have to rebuild. I'm desperately hoping to avoid this situation this time!

Wednesday is rest day anyway, so I made sure I really rested. The cold I was fighting seemed to be going away and my shin was feeling a little better, so I was hopeful.

Thursday rolled around and I still knew. I knew I needed to not run. I had a race coming up on Sunday, I wanted to be sure I could run that, so I made another difficult decision and skipped out on my tempo run that day also. That night, before I headed to bed, I started sneezing. A lot. And my body started aching. I knew it! I was getting sick! I sewed up Brecka's running skirt this day!

Friday I woke up miserable! Are you kidding me! Two days before my race, I had a head cold and a sore throat! I texted a friend right away and picked up some doTERRA Onguard throat drops which usually helps to nip all that in the bud! I had planned to lay low, but then remembered I needed to get to the school for my son's award assembly and I was gonna be late!! I booked it as fast as I could, that mile to the school and made it just in time. Then I spent some recess time chasing around one of the kiddos I used to teach. My shin was pissed, but nothing else seemed to be too bad, so I was hopeful the cold wasn't a bad one. By the time evening rolled around though, I knew it was bad. I figured if I could keep it from getting into my chest I stood a chance of being able to run on Sunday without any major issue.

Saturday morning I woke up early to volunteer at the Hot Chocolate expo and felt worse than when I went to bed. I was not winning this battle! I spent 5 hours there helping (more on that later) and then went home to rest. My body was still so tired and my shin was still sore. I laid down for a little while as I was tensing my shoulder and fell asleep for just a bit. When I woke up I knew it was over. There was no denying, the cold was in my chest. I wanted to do a quick shakeout run. In hindsight, I should've rallied and done it, but I chose rest instead.

As you can see, it was a long week of doing virtually nothing. I walked 10,000 steps each day, but that's all I was able to do. Resting my body has been a very difficult thing for me this week. I wanted to run so badly. I was jealous when my friends would post up runs, especially Brecka, who I'm training with this cycle. How silly is that!! I'm really missing running with her right now!! But I knew I needed to take it easy. It helped to have her remind me of my long term goals and to tell me to rest. I want to be able to run for years, not just this race cycle. Resting when I'm sick and injured is important. I am a very blessed girl to have people help remind me when I'm so tempted to push myself in a way that wouldn't be good for me! And watching her kill her runs is pretty awesome too! I'll just act as a cheerleader instead of a training buddy for a couple of weeks!

The next couple of weeks may unfortunately look sorta similar to this past week. I'm still not feeling very well, and after Sunday's race, my shin is really hurting badly. I need time to recover. I would rather miss out on some of the earlier training runs further away from my next race, than miss the ones leading right up to it, or missing my race altogether, from injury. That doesn't mean I won't be doing anything this week though. I'm planning to make it to the gym for some cycle time and some light lifting. Nothing really hard and strenuous. Just enough to get moving a little while I wait for my shin to heal and my cold to get better. While I believe that resting is the way to go, I also believe that sometimes some movement helps to speed things up a little. Just sitting around will make me stir crazy anyway!

Stay tuned though for later this week on how our long run (the Hot Chocolate 15k) went on Sunday!!