Marathon Weekly Update

Ice is usually the answer

Last spring, on my annual trip into the smoky Mountains, I got tendonitis in my achilles. After two months I was finally pain and inflammation free. I haven't done any long-term rigorous activity since then nor had any problems. Until now.

In the past few weeks I noticed that my left achilles was feeling swollen so yesterday I went to see Patti, the athletic trainer at my school. First she wanted to know what in the hell I was thinking running a marathon (I seem to get the same reaction from everyone). When I told her that I wanted to get in shape I got "the look." It is a mixture of 'You're doing what? That's really cool! Are you crazy?' and I get it often when I tell people about my training. She checked out my achilles and gave me a few pointers to keep it from getting "pissy" (her word, not mine). Basically it all boils down to ice.

I ran my 3 miles this morning and felt like I could have kept on going for hours. This seems to be a pattern and I'm not sure what to make of it. On my Tuesday runs I feel like an elephant. My feet slap the treadmill and I huff and I puff my way through 30 minutes. At the end I feel like I might die. On Thursday mornings I never seem to get winded, my legs aren't tired, and I barely sweat. I know that there are on and off days with running but this just seems strange.

After kicking myself off the treadmill and trudging my way through an ab workout I dutifully saranwrapped a bag of ice to ankle. It is amazing how quickly skin will numb when in contact with ice. At the end of it all, it worked better than I could have imagined. I guess icing is going to become a part of my daily routine.

posted by Heidi @ 7:31 PM