"It's amazing how your body is a chain of events....I don'tI did everything the way I was supposed to. Something hurt? I took a day off. The easy comeback run still hurt? Take another day off. Still hurts, even running really, really slow? FIVE days off. I stretch. I foam roll. I Advil. I rest.
think any athlete is ever 100 percent." - champion pole vaulter Stacy Dragila, on the various aches and pains she's gone through as she returns to training after achilles surgery.
And here I am, more than a week later, still wincing when I put weight on my right leg, or bend over, or sit up a little funny, still feeling something not quite right in my lower back or hip or somewhere in that general vicinity. I skipped a meaningless 10 miler that I was signed up for last weekend, but tomorrow is an actual team points race that I was really actually looking forward to, and now it looks pretty stupid for me to even try running the thing as a tempo.
And almost just as worrisome, cutting the running out of my schedule hasn't bothered me one bit. Last week I was waking up naturally at six AM and now my mental alarm clock is perfectly happy to give me the nudge at 8:30. I can't honestly say that I miss the running even slightly. I don't like the nagging pain, but I sure don't mind the extra sleep. Is this a bad thing?
I'm really not sure where I go from here. I'll see Bruce, my acupuncture, massage guru guy, next Tuesday. But if I don't start to see some sign of improvement soon, my plans for a really intense summer of training might turn out to have been a bit premature.