Saturday, June 2, 2012

Ouch....


                                          (pic of me doing ankle rehab exercises with S.C. cheering me on)

So, it seems my daily blog posts have been relegated to a more infrequent/weekly post as I find myself dedicating more time to training while trying to manage mommy life as well...hence, I am even more exhausted at the end of the day! Now I also get to add ankle exercises to my list of "to do's" as I was out jogging in 90+ degree weather on Thursday and felt pain in my ankle around the 4th or 5th mile. My goal was to do 6 which I did mainly because the pain seemed to subside after I initially felt it and stopped to stretch. However, after the hard workout, I felt it again and this time I knew something was awry. I took some Ibuprofen and iced it that night and woke up on Friday with the ankle feeling really stiff and more painful. Ugh! I've never had ankle issues in all my 20+ years of running. I really felt bummed thinking that maybe I had a stress fracture. So I managed to get an appointment with my sports medicine doc and she feels like it is a tendon issue. However, she couldn't say for sure given the tests she ran. So basically, I am off running for at least week and in the meantime will be focusing on my biking and swimming. That's the great thing about training for a tri...if you go down in one sport, you can hopefully pick up in the other one or two.

Today is Saturday and I was surprised to wake up without pain. Granted I did take 400mg of Ibuprofen last night but I thought I would still feel stiff in the a.m. So...wanting to test out my riding ability, I headed for our team workout at the Tobacco Trail. Basically, our team is down to me and another woman with our coach. Unfortunately, others quit early on in the season or have been hampered by physical issues or, in one case, a couple changed jobs and moved to Florida this past month! So, life happens but it still hasn't dampened my excitement for the race which is in 3 weeks. This recent injury though has gotten me down a little. I want to be prepared for the race yet play it safe enough so that I can have a good time in Atlanta. My doc said to lay off the running or any activity that is painful for a week to 10 days and if I still can't walk or run without pain then she would order an MRI to verify if it is a stress fracture etc. I am truly hoping my ankle irons itself out with the aid of icing, meds and exercises.

On a side note, last weekend my teammate and I met our other coach for our brick and had a strong ride of 15+ miles averaging around 18mph on rolling hills. He wanted us to go all out and chase the 2 guys who started a few minutes ahead of us. I caught one of them at the very end. I can tell I am improving with my power on the bike which feels good. Then I ran for ~ 5 miles. Tuesday, Tracey and I met at Jordan Lake and swam ~900 meters in pretty choppy waters. It was good to get a sense of what that could feel like on race day. We found it harder to sight and hence swim efficiently and in a straight line. I've learned new swim exercises with the pull buoy that I am going to use this week. I am actually excited about it! I took Wednesday off and then see above for what happened on Thursday...blah!

So, in my professional opinion, I am guessing I believe my new stretchy shoe laces may have been the culprit for my ankle injury. I've heard that using the elastic laces really helps in transition as you can just slip your running shoes off and on without losing a minute or so actually tying your laces. So I tried out 2 different brands and settled on the Easy Laces (I tried the Yangz as well but thought it was too cumbersome). Anyway, I suspect that with all the curves at Lake Pine where I ran on Thursday, the elastic laces were not giving my ankle enough support and letting it over-bend which caused tendon strain. So off with the fancy laces and hello to the regular joe-schmoe laces that I will use with barrel ties more than likely.

Anyway, there you have it. My week in a nutshell. Only 3 more weeks until the big race! Given that I am searching for more races beyond this one, I think I may have caught a little bit of the tri bug!

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