Stubborn is as stubborn does.
I am as stubborn as the next person. Maybe even more stubborn than the next person. But this close to participating in my first marathon and I am not going to let stubborness come between me and completion.
I’m talking about an injury that was slowly progressing from irritating to bad to worse. My achilles tendon started to hurt at various times about a week ago. Then as I continued my work outs it hurt a little more. Over the weekend, thought I mostly completed my long run it was a painful mess.
I went to the Dr. today and got real anti-inflamatories, though I think most people could take ibuprofen. I was also given strict instructions to stretch a lot. Stretch before and stretch after a work out. Stretch when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed. Ice it every night for 15 minutes and be very careful.
That’s a lot of stretching. Do you know how much stretching I do now? Zilch. Zero. Nada. None. There are serious schools of thought that pre and post run stretching offers no significant benefits to the runner. Unless of course you have tendonitis in your achilles tendon then it has a lot of benefits. My Dr., sweet physician that she is also recommended yoga classes. Her comment was “Stretching is good for you. You’re getting old it’s time you started to act a little wiser about what you take on.”
Don’t you love Dr.’s?
I’m not letting that stop me. I can still run once and maybe twice a week. If it hurts on either work out this week then I need to cut back to once a week and I have to get my cardio in some other way. So I’m increasing my spinning classes from once to 3 times a week. I’m also doubling up on them so at least twice a week I’m spinning for almost 2 hours. It’s a great workout and really gets the heart pumping. And to round out the exercise I’m swimming for 30 minutes 2 - 3 times a week.
I will complete the marathon and I will not finish last.
