Road to Recovery

It has been 10 days since I injured my ankle and things have been progressing well so far. I have done my best to rest and stay off my feet as much as possible which has been extremely difficult for me. I am not a patient person and I don't do well just sitting around. This was amplified by having this week off work and having to cancel pretty much all of my vacation plans due to my ankle. I tried my best to find ways to stay busy that wouldn't cause further damage. 

For the first few nights I slept in my recliner with pillows under my feet. I wore a compression wrap during the day and iced it every morning and evening. I also used the elevator at work to cut down on the number of stairs each day. For the most part, I have seen slow but consistent improvement each day. Below are some pictures of my foot from April 12th, which was probably the peak of the bruising but when the swelling was just starting to go down. 

As of today, the bruising is about 90% gone, and the swelling is down about 80%. I'm able to walk around with a normal gait and mostly pain free. At the beginning of the week I started wearing an athletic ankle brace and intend to wear it for the next couple of months to help prevent reinjury. I've also started back to swimming and have been spending time on the exercise bike in the basement. I'm slowly beginning to add in some PT exercises to begin to strengthen my ankle as well. 

At this point I feel like I am on track to begin running again next week (after the 2 weeks of no running prescribed by the doctor) but will be extremely cautious as I start back in. While I am still very hopeful that I can get back on track by the Market to Market Relay on May 11th, I am focusing on my long term health and recovery. 

With a week off work and nothing to do, I have had a lot of time to think about how to proceed with my 2024 racing schedule. After a lot of thought and discussion with friends, I've decided that I'm going to switch things up. 2024 is less than 4 months old and I've already lost 2 months of training. I'm also a bit nervous about the intensity and milage involved with my marathon training program that was set to begin in June. With all that in mind, I'm going to shift my focus for 2024 from training longer miles for a marathon and half marathon PR attempt to shorter distance races. Specifically, I'm going to target a 5k PR. I feel like at this point of the year, this goal would be much more attainable with much less risk than going after a full marathon. 

For now, I'll keep my focus on continued recovery as well as adapting my training and race schedule for the remainder of the year. Additionally, I'm going to refocus myself on losing weight. Once I settle on schedule updates, I will share them in a future blog post.

Down But Not Out

My 2024 racing season has gotten off to a rough start. After missing nearly the entire month of February due to an impacted kidney stone, I was facing some mental struggles and issues sleeping throughout the month of March. I began to feel my racing season slipping away. As the calendar turned to April, I began to refocus myself and adjust my training schedule to match what I could do and help to build up some confidence. I really felt like I just needed some consistency and to get some miles on my legs going into the races in April. After opting for 30 minute run/walk on Saturday, April 6th I was able to complete an 8 mile training run on Sunday morning. It was hard, and I didn't run fast, but I felt great when I finished. 

I knew that my legs would need some recovery on Monday morning, so I planned to do a 60 minute run/walk again. I started off extremely easy around 5:15 am with the hope of getting about 4.5 miles in. A little over a mile in, my legs were really starting to loosen up and I had a good sweat going. As I approached 2 miles in I felt my right foot land on something hard and I instantly fell. My ankle completely rolled and I scraped my left knee on the ground. As the panic passed and I began to collect myself, I looked down to see a painted "Kindness rock" on the bike path right where my foot slid out from under me. I inspected my foot and ankle before trying to stand. My initial reaction was that nothing was broken and I was able to slowly, but painfully, walk the half mile home. 

Once at home I realized how badly scraped my knee was as well. I managed to get my knee cleaned up and take a shower before my ankle got too swollen. I quickly got a compression wrap on the ankle, a bandage on the knee, and headed to work. Things progressively got worse throughout the day on Monday and I really struggled to walk or drive. Monday night when I took off the wrap, both sides of my ankle and a lot of my foot were grotesque colors of blue and purple. Additionally, my right ankle was more than double the size of my left. I slept in my recliner with the foot elevated and I got into the doctor on Tuesday morning.

The doctor said that I had handled everything well, especially using the compression wrap. X-rays were taken and confirmed that I did not fracture any of the bones. I left the doctor with strict instructions to stay off the ankle as much as possible for 2 weeks and absolutely no running or biking for the next 2-4 weeks. We really won't know what damage is done until the doctor can evaluate the stability of my ankle after the swelling subsides, so depending on how things go in the next 2 weeks, I may need to return. 

So like February, April will turn out to be another lost month of training for the year. Unlike February, I will actually have to miss races this time. I was scheduled to run the Live Healthy Iowa 5k in Bondurant on Saturday, April 13 and the Drake Road Races 10k on Sunday, April 21 but I will not be able to do either of them. Additionally, I have the next 10 days off of work and was planning to fit a lot of good training in but that is off the table now too. 

The good news is that there is a chance that I will be able to run again during early May. After Drake, my next scheduled race is the Market to Market Relay on May 11th. That is supposed to kick off a 5 week stretch of back-to-back races. I'm not quite sure what my plans will be but I plan to evaluate that over the next several weeks and will post an update once I decide. No matter what happens, I know that I am very resilient and will be back chasing my goals as soon as it is safe and healthy to do so. For now, I'm going to try to stay positive and find ways to not die of boredom over the next 10 days.