Illness and injury

I was supposed to be running a 10k run today, but I’ve picked up an injury. I’ve knackered my leg.

Since the end of the swimming season I’ve done a couple of sprint triathlons – which included a 5k at the end of each – and I’ve also been training up for the 10k. It would seem that my cardiovascular fitness was fine to get me through that, but because I haven’t run for ages my biomechanics just weren’t there. I’m very flat-footed and so that means that my calf muscles need to work overtime to provide extra support to compensate for that. Because I just launched into 5ks and beyond it strained those muscles and ligaments too much.

At the moment, I’ve been told that I need to wear soft heels as much as possible – so no slippers around the house, instead I’m wearing my running shoes. As I’m not wearing them to run in at the moment, that’s fine.

And on a side note, fortunately Andrew was able to take my place on today’s run and acquitted himself excellently.

While I’ve been feeling sorry for myself that I can’t run for a while, I’ve been consoling myself that at least I can still swim – or I could. I’ve picked up an ear infection and I now need to stay out of the pool for a week.

I had an ear infection before and it was very possibly the most painful thing I’ve gone through. For about three days I lived in a cycle of:
– Take the strongest painkillers I could
– Snooze for a couple of hours as they took effect
– Wake up and watch West Wing to distract me as the painkillers wore off
– Repeat

Fortunately this infection isn’t anywhere near as bad. But I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself and the no swimming feels pretty painful 😦

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