injury - AnnaTheApple

January 23, 2014

It’s not all rainbows and smiles

I have been waiting to run for weeks. I’ve been dreaming about running. Reading about people’s amazing race recaps, long runs, speedy running club sessions…torturing myself with what I’ve been missing out on. I also stopped reading Runner’s World and volunteering at Parkrun. It was just too hard. I wanted to run so badly.

Now I’m running again. Hurrah! Can you hear those angels singing?

This morning I did another 4 mile ‘don’t care about pace just run’ run. And reality unfolds.

My dreams of running and gliding across the pavement with a smile on my face is not reality. Running is hard. When did I forget that? Running in the morning when it’s still so dark, it’s very cold and there are few people about…it’s tough. Not seeing familiar paces for the effort I’m doing on my Garmin is hard.

And the worst part? Constantly thinking about every single aspect of my body. Literally my mind is doing this: where are my feet falling? Are my knees dipping inwards? Am I leaning over? How’s my back? Woah, am I leaning back too much? How’s my IT band feeling? What about my knee? Knee, knee, knee, knee… This is all I’m thinking about.

And then the time after the run: what does my knee feel like? What about my IT band? My back? What if I poke it here? Or here?

When does an injury really go away? Physically I’m almost there. Mentally I’m no where near. I am terrified of not fully recovering, or worse relapsing and getting injured again. I am questioning everything I’m doing. Strength training, spinning, stretching.

But I need to trust in my physio. I need to trust in my body and not over-think. Otherwise I’m going to explode. And Ben might kill me.

Do you over-think things? I read too much information from too many different places and then panic. Ben calls me ‘PAnnakin’ (lame Star Wars joke I guess).

Have you ever been injured, if so how long did it take to get back to normal? Both physically and mentally?

Do you ever question what you’re doing? Whether it’s at work, in the gym or just in life.

January 22, 2014

Draw a line under it and move on

Hey, hey, hey! How’s things going?

It’s funny, I feel so much more rested when I get up pre-6am than when I do post-7am. How weird is that? Even when I don’t set an alarm my body naturally wakes up around 5am and so I try to fall back asleep and then wake up feeling so groggy. Don’t get my wrong, I don’t leap out of bed with a smile on my face when the alarm goes at *whispers* 5.15am but once I’m up I feel pretty good.

After my run on Sunday I felt my lower back was slightly tight and my outer knee (IT band territory) was feeling slightly niggly. I started to panic: oh my God I’m broken again!!

I saw my physio on Tuesday morning and explained everything to him. I also mentioned about my hard leg workout the day before. He said I’d been a bit stupid. My legs were probably exhausted from the tough workout which had then put more pressure on my back and IT band when I ran… whoops. But he did his thang and said things felt less tight than before and my right leg was a lot stronger again now. He said I wasn’t to worry and that things were heading in the right direction and I could continue to run.

PANIC OVER.

I still need to leave a day between runs and I’m not running over 4 miles. Progress though! So my next run is Thursday 😀 and I can do Parkrun Saturday. Finally!

On to matters of food… I’ve been back in the salad groove as of late (maybe to offset my current cake overload…dear lord, it’s gotten out of control this week!)

Rubbish photo I know

This beast of salad contained pretty much all my favourite foods (except cake…). Tinned salmon, broad beans, two kinds of lettuce, broccoli, roasted butternut squash, beetroot, onion, garlic roasted courgette…oh my life this was so good. I love beastie salads because they take so long to eat and you can really enjoy them. And tinned salmon in my books is so much more superior to fresh or smoke salmon – am I alone in that opinion??

We also tried hummus baked chicken.

I basically just topped chicken breasts with roasted pepper hummus and then baked it in tin foil. It was easier to serve it in the foil as it was a bit messy. Quite a rustic look I like to think… Served with roasted veggies. Ben loved this.

So…let’s talk about the amount of cake I’ve eaten recently. Tuesday, as well as my physio, was also ‘bring a cake to work day’. Well, can you get a better day than that at work?? My lovely work friend was concerned I wouldn’t get any cake because I was in a bit later due to my physio appointment. So she got me a ‘mixed grill’ style selection platter…

OK, so what have we got there? Giant slice of Victoria sponge, underneath that a rather generous slice of baked cheese cake, some rocky road and a Mars bar crispie cake. At first I was flabbergasted by how much she’d gotten me.

Yeah… well it took me two sessions during the day to finish the plate off but it happened. I don’t even want to think how much sugar or how many calories I consumed. And then…later on…I had another cheeky slice of Victoria sponge.

I don’t often feel guilty about the treats I have, but I really felt quite bad for what I’ve eaten. I mean let’s be honest, it was a lot. I also woke up this morning feeling quite bloated and not great. Spin was a joy I can tell you. Ha!

But I drew a line under it and today and for the rest of the week it’s all about sensible choices and healthy nutritious meals. I don’t eat rubbish and cake every day and I exercise regularly. I eat healthy meals and I only have a crazy blow-out once in a while. I’m not going to starve myself or ramp up my workouts. Life is not about punishing yourself.

Then Saturday it’s afternoon tea…shhh.

What do you do when you’ve had a bit of a ‘bad food’ blow-out?

What foods are your naughty go-to foods?

What would be on your ‘mixed grill’ selection platter of cakes?

January 16, 2014

I’ve been cheating

So I have a bit of a confession to make. I’ve been cheating…

On my physio.

I started seeing my physio (technically osteopath) in December when I decided to stop running and sort my knee out. She saw me every week and worked with me in helping me ‘re-align’ my knee and sorted my trainers to stop my feet from continuing to over pronate (causing my knees to sink inwards and lean to my right side).

She allowed me to run a few 1 milers and 2 miles. But after standing around watching Ben’s marathon just before Christmas my knee just felt terrible. It was like things were exactly as they were before December. I started to despair. There was a tightness in my whole right leg that was awful. All the way from my lower back to my knee. And my IT band was started to rear it’s ugly head again.

ARE YOU JOKING?

Don’t get me wrong. I think my osteopath is excellent. She offered me some quick 10 minute freebie ultra sounds a few times a week for two weeks. She’s just down the corridor at work so it’s been perfect. And my knee was feeling better. But the tightness was still there.

So I cheated. I went and saw Ben’s physio for a second opinion last week. A fresh set of eyes if you will. [And obviously I have a money tree in my back garden (ha!).]

I stressed the tightness in my right leg, specifically my IT band. He straight away looked at my back. Apparently the whole right side of my back, specifically lower back, is really tight in comparison to my left (interestingly, this is the exact same thing my PT said to me). The tightness in my back and tightness in my glute and hip pulls all the way down my IT band and tugs at my knee.

Apologies for my amateur line drawing!

I then had the most painful back massage known to man. But the release in tension was unbelievable.

I’ve seen him twice and have another appointment tomorrow and next Tuesday. But I’ve also been continuing to see my osteopath for the ultra sound (which will be stopping tomorrow – to be honest my knee feels 98% good).

The problem is, this physio advised no running. My osteopath advised running 2 miles every couple of days. And I’ve been lying to her saying I have been running 🙁

Oh the web of lies that I’ve become entangled in!

I know, I know. Terrible. But I can’t throw back her treatment at her when she’s been so helpful to me and provided free treatment when she really didn’t have to. She’s definitely helped reduce the inflammation and the ‘bottom-up’ side of the problem from my feet. But the new physio seems to be working more on the cause of the tightness I’m feeling rather than just focusing on the knee.

End of the story is…my new physio has allowed me to START RUNNING SUNDAY! My knee discomfort is pretty much gone and the tightness has hugely improved.

Incidentally, I may be fixed physically but financially I’m now broke 😉

Fingers crossed that marathon training begins Monday.

Have you ever sort out a second opinion?

Do you get back pain or tightness? I wouldn’t say I had pain, but the tightness is very uncomfortable.

**Also, BIG thank you for bearing with me on this, I know my injury posts can’t be that exciting. I really appreciate all your good advice and well wishing**

January 13, 2014January 16, 2014

Winter workout and tasty pastries

Happy Monday, everyone. Is it me or is it starting to get lighter in the mornings? I can’t wait until I’m woken by sunlight in the morning again…such a gentle way to wake up.

During my time off of running [apart from boring the socks off of everyone about how much I wish I was running] I have been going to the gym and trying to strengthen my body so that when it decides it is happy to run again, it will run strong.

I’ve been seeing a person trainer pretty much once a week (apart from Christmas) and he’s been guiding me through lots of exercises that I would never have done on my own. And lifting weights I would never have dreamed I could have done. Now I am by no means comparable to lots of other far stronger people out there, but for me I’m amazed.

My session last week he instructed me to deadlift a dumbbell bar weighing a total of 50kg. This is pretty much my weight! I realise this might seem so easy to some people but I couldn’t do it. I was terrified: it was too heavy, I was convinced I’d break my back or knees.

He took the weights off and started with just 20kg. He tutored my form and then added more weights, I deadlifted, then rested. He added more weights, I deadlifted, then rested. We continued with this until we were back at 50kg. And I did it – all 8 reps of it!!

It’s not running, no where near. But I was so proud of myself.

I also follow workouts that my running coach devised (all those weeks ago) which is mainly focused on lower body:

This took me 40mins to complete. And I looked like a right berk doing the unbalanced squats.

I’m hoping that I’ve been using my ‘non-running’ time well. And when I get back into running I will continue with my strength workouts, hopefully, twice a week. That is the plan anyway!

On an entirely different note, I was sent some pastry cases made by Pidy to try out. Pidy products are made with their award winning pastry recipe that the Pidy family initially created in their little patisserie shop in Ypres, Belgium back in 1952. They have a huge range of different pastries ready for fillings to be added.

I’m not a huge fan of pastry I must say but these sounded very cute and dinky. I was sent three types: mini square puff pastry squares, award winning pastry ‘sponnettes’ and veggie cups. The puff pastry squares were 130 calories per square and the spoonettes and veggie cups under 20 calories. There are no artificial colours of E-numbers and they’re a great source of fibre too.

Because we were feeling lazy on Sunday night Ben and me decided to have a sort of snack plate so we could try out the pastries.

I filled the different pastries with tuna pate, hummus and Brussels pate. We could have been more adventurous I’m sure and made them more exciting but these little things were perfectly delicious just like this and very filling! My favourite was definitely the veggie cups which were with 30% beetroot juice (hence the colour) and they were very crunchy which I loved. Other veggie cup flavours are carrot, spinach and celeriac.

I’m sure they’d be perfect versatile snacks that you could really go to town on the fillings and offer to guests when hosting an evening (ooh er, how posh!). And they don’t just have to be savoury, you could easily fill these badboys with sweet fillings – like fruit and yogurt, or chocolatey yumminess.

Thanks to food PR agency CLIP Creative and PR for the samples!

**I was sent the samples to review, but these are all my own opinions of the product**

Right, let’s get this week started!

Are you good with balancing strength workouts with cardio?

Do you like finger food and canapés? I love canapés. I especially love weddings with posh canapés 😉

What would you fill these pastries with? I was a bit boring with mine but they were very tasty regardless.

January 6, 2014January 16, 2014

Strong and healthy 2014

Hello and (belated) happy New Year. Looking back 2013 has been pretty good…and bad.

In running and fitness…

At the beginning of the year I was signed up the Reading Half Marathon (my first half). I enjoyed running and I was quite rigid in sticking to my training plan. I thoroughly enjoyed the half and my love for running just sky rocketed.

I found a local running club, started doing Parkruns when I could and signed up to a zillion races. It seemed throughout the summer I was running a 10k every week (at times I was!)

But we all know how that ended. I suffered from what seemed like one injury after another…if it wasn’t my hip, it was my IT band, or my groin…and now my knee. Believe me when I say I have learnt a lot this year about my body.

I have a few regrets from this year and a few races I wish I’d never done (Great South Run I’m looking at you). But you live in and learn. My physio (who I fondly think of as my therapist at the moment 😉 ) says that it wasn’t me being entirely stupid in my running. She thinks my running really took off this year and my body wasn’t fully ready. It was a shock to suddenly be doing all this speed work and races and not backing it up with sensible strength work and stretching – I was a bit uneducated and keen. I was hitting good times and excelling in my running but it was a lot of pressure on my body. One injury leads to an imbalance or weakness and this can cause another injury…

Now I’m working my way slowly to building the running back up while also focusing on areas I would never usually focus on like my upper body to help support my legs.

To be honest, I can’t even think about past January with running right now. I’m feeling very nervous about the M word in April (*whispers* Paris marathon). It’s not guaranteed I’ll do it. Please, knee, don’t let me down!

In life…

Ben and me are strong and happy 🙂 He is my rock. How he copes with me moaning all the time about running is just unbelievable. He’s a saint. I always say he’s the nice one out of us as he’s just too damn lovely for his own good. I’m the selfish one between us for definite! And I can be sarcastic and cutting at times – something I should work on.

Skiing in February was amazing (wow I can’t believe that was this year??)…

My sister sprogging another lovely little girl in March…

Going on an ahhh-mazing holiday to Mexico…

Not too shabby! I don’t foresee any crazy life events happening this year, just more of the same: family and friend loveliness. And one of my oldest besties having a bambino and another getting married!

I’ve decided I don’t do resolutions. I have goals which I’d like to achieve – things like PBs and races – but I’m focusing instead on what is really important to me:

Become injury-free and strong in my running. Wow did you see this coming? This will involve my continued rehab of my current injury and then consistent effort every single week to strengthen my weakness (glutes, hips, hamstrings). Becoming a BALANCED runner.
Run a marathon. I want to achieve this SO much this year. It’s my absolute dream. But I’m only content to run a strong and healthy marathon that I’m proud of. If that means waiting, I will just have to wait.
Go to the cinema more and have more date nights with Ben. I love films and I love the cinema and I love Ben. This makes sense.

There are smaller things that I want to achieve day-to-day like trying to be less selfish and less sarcastic but I think these will be life-goals 😉

Quick fire 2013:

Best film: I think Wreck It Ralph. We really loved watching it.

Best book: The Stephen King book 11/22/63. I knew next to nothing about JFK’s assassination and this book blew my mind. So clever.

Best song: Tom Odell Another Love. Really sad but really lovely. Sit in a dark room and mope to it.

Best race: Without a doubt Cheddar Gorge Half Marathon. No where near my PB but this was an experience I’ll never forget. I loved every second. Body-willing, we’re doing it again this year.

Best meal: too hard to narrow down so I have top contenders:

From left: the amazing meal in the Brazilian all you-can-eat. I wish I had two stomachs. The Caesar salad after the Bristol half marathon. I tell you, nothing tastes as good as running 13.1 miles first. Jamie Oliver turkey Milanese meal after the Reading half. I could eat this every single day (I have eaten it four times). The burger and chips after the Cheddar Gorge half (that relish…oh!) and the Caesar salad at my mum’s surprise birthday meal.

Here’s to more good food, happy family and friends, strong and healthy running and (please!) a successful marathon.

Was 2013 good to you?

Do you make resolutions? What are yours?

What’s your favourite film/movie/song this year?