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.
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