Injured but not down

So here I am again, the injured runner. Oh to be one of those hardy people who never gets injured. But such are the cards I’m dealt.

I did get a little angry (well, not angry just jokingly irate ;-)) at a guy at parkrun after he’d written a long-winded and moany post on Facebook about how annoyed and sad he was that he was facing a similar injury to one he’d had four years ago. Bare in mind he’s not been injured since then. AND HE WAS COMPLAINING. One injury every four years? I’ll take it!!! Damn it, I’d pay money for those sort of odds.

Anyway. Yes I’m injured. I’ve sort of been in denial about it but now as the marathon training is looming in front of me I need to be honest with myself. To be fair, the two runs I did the other week that I sung the praises for on my blog did go amazingly. I felt 100% fine during and after…and then parkrun happened and boom! Back to square one. It’s almost worse when that happens as you’re given a tiny bit of hope that everything’s OK and then it’s ripped away from you.

I’ve given up wondering why it’s happened because this is the part that frustrates me more than anything. This isn’t a new injury, it’s a reoccurring one. Nothing I seem to do helps. It just crops up every year, summer or winter. JUST GO AWAY. Give me a flipping chance.

It’s my shin/calf. I guess a shin splint? Just one leg. The particular area of niggliness and/or pain sort of moves up and down the area so *shrugs* I don’t know. It’s not excruciating pain though, just an occasional throb and general feeling of tightness and discomfort that gets worse running.

On Saturday when I did my doomed pre-parkrun running trial it went very badly. Straight off the bat the niggle was like “hey, Anna, how’s it going?”. So I obviously stopped straight away. I finished my walk with Alfie, my head spinning with what I should do. Luckily I was staying at my parents so I could have my pathetic little melt down with them, rather than on my own with just Alfie looking despairingly at me.

“That’s it! I’m cancelling Tokyo!” I sobbed to them (like I said, pathetic). It’s just too stressful. It’s just too hard. Running is my fun time, my de-stressor, my happy place. It shouldn’t make me feel this way (mentally and physically). My mum and dad calmed me down and we talked rationally about what to do about Tokyo. You know, that rather expensive holiday purely to do the marathon I had planned.

I checked the small print of the details (I booked through a tour company) and counted the days until I was to go. Unfortunately at this point I’ll only get 50% of my money back. Bollocks. Excuse my French. Had I made this decision 10 days ago I would have gotten significantly more money back.

Right, so Tokyo is STILL on. Even if I have to walk the whole damn thing I will bloody do it.

Realistically, I do have a fair bit of time (12 weeks) and I may have been somewhat over-dramatic in my reaction. I haven’t got an injury that is significantly world-ending. I can still successfully cross-train fairly easily by either bike or elliptical. And I can’t imagine I’m going to be out of the game until February (the marathon is at the end of Feb). I just won’t be able to get the proper marathon build-up or training I prefer.

But even if I only get up to 10 miles, I know I can do it. Yes it’ll be painful, my expectations amended accordingly and the recovery process post-marathon a bit of a bitch. But it’s a Marathon Major, it’s in Japan (I’ve never been) and I’m at a time of my life where I can do this without guilt.

Who cares if I get overtaken by a Pikachu or an oversized HelloKitty?

So there we go. My current status is not running at the moment but continued cross-training (I can barely contain my excitement) and a few trips to my physio. Mentally I’m OK. Yes it royally sucks, but I’ve been here before. I also have a lovely Florida holiday to cushion any January post-Christmas I WANT TO RUN blues sooo it can’t all be doom and gloom after all 😉

My one wish, though, is to be able to do Christmas parkrun…

What would you do if you were me?

How do you deal with injuries?

All the puddings

This weekend was full of highs and lows. Let’s get the lows done quickly, shall we?

I ran on Monday night and my shin/calf was really niggly. It had niggled slightly at parkrun a week ago but I put it down to it being really cold and my muscles not being warm enough. But Monday clarified things. It didn’t feel right and afterwards it felt pretty crappy. I’ll go into this in another post but basically this is rubbish.

Anyway, I didn’t run again until deciding to try a few miles before parkrun this weekend (because I was panicking I hadn’t hit the 8 mile long run I needed to for Tokyo). Though I knew I was lying to myself. I knew the run wouldn’t go well really and this was just to avoid me going to parkrun believing I could run and having to DNF. So on my pre-parkrun walk with Alfie I ran up the road with him and decided it was a no-go. I got back home, wrapped up in warmer clothes and headed to parkrun to set-up and volunteer.img_6900It was very cold and despite having several layers on and a hat I was cold. I was grumpy as I was overthinking about my leg, running and marathon training…but I was eventually cheered up by the lovely parkrun crew. You can’t be too sad at parkrun!

After parkrun and a hot bowl of porridge, I headed to the gym to take out some of my frustrations. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine which made me feel a little better about not running and then did a fantastic glute workout which I’m still feeling today. This included:

• Squats
• Landmine squats (these are great for really working on your depth)
• Monster walks with a resistance band
• Cable pull-throughs
• Leg press burnout
• Single leg deadlifts

I left the gym feeling accomplished and far more happy. Sometimes you just need to sweat it out!

I was also feeling good because I was going out for a Christmas meal with my friends. It’s always so nice to dress up. I wore a very sparkly dress with sparkly shoes and felt really happy 🙂img_6924

We went to the Cams Mill pub (where the Fareham parkrun starts at). It was very nice!img_6935We’d made our menu selections a while ago and I was disappointed with myself for choosing trout as my main rather than turkey (who does that!??!). I think my rationale was that I didn’t want to over-do turkey before the big day. I was very jealous when the mains came out though. However, my trout was delicious (and I got some leftover turkey from one of my friends so it was a win-win!)cams-mill-pubAnd again I was annoyed that I’d selected a pear tart for pudding… but then realised I’d chosen it because the cheesecake was chocolate orange which I don’t really like. I’m not a Terry’s Chocolate Orange fan at all! And Christmas pudding is a bit too rich and alcoholly for me.

The pear tart, however, was really really good. The ice cream was lovely and creamy and the tart was lovely and (dare I say) moist. No big nasty chunks of pear in which I was fearing. As nice as it was, I got serious food envy when I saw the cheesecakes. They looked so good! My friends laughed at me for ordering the inferior pear tart and I grudgingly watched them enjoy their cheesecakes (the far more popular pudding choice). Isn’t it the way when even though the meal you’re eating is nice but you see something that looks more appealing suddenly your meal isn’t as good…just me?

However, I was very lucky that two of my friends didn’t finish their cheesecakes and passed them down to me! Now, on reflection, I can say the pear tart was the better pudding. I’m still not a chocolate orange fan and who serves cheesecake with orange sorbet?? But I can’t say I complained too much 😉 Though I felt very full afterwards!!  Just call me the human dustbin…

I did have a few gin and tonics as well, because it’s Christmas 😉 Though amusingly my first G&T didn’t actually contain any gin and I was sipping away thinking “this is lovely!” until the barman ran over to me and said he needed to put the gin in as it got taken before it was ready! Oops. Shows how much I drink!img_6940Anyway the evening was good. Nothing like good friends and good food to make you feel 100 times better.

Christmas meal number two this week 😀

Are you going to any Christmas parties or meals this year?

Will you be dressing up?

What would you normally order on a Christmas menu?