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?