Wednesday, July 6, 2011

"Walking on, Walking on Broken Glass"

I'm leaving work when I get an email on my iPhone from the B.A.A. Registration for its half marathon starts in a week. And my first thought is, "But my legs hurt!"

Not from running, though. From muscle conditioning. Since the B.A.A. 10K, I've been taking a little hiatus from running.

I felt like superwoman when I woke up the day after the 10K with no sore muscles. I went for a long walk and then (this is where I got stupid) hopped on the treadmill for an easy thirty minutes.

For the next four days, I had a stabbing pain in my heel. A sharp, deep pain. I totally thought I had plantar fasciitis. I stretched my calves, used my foam roller, and propped my heel up on a bag of cocktail ice.

It went away. Not plantar fasciitis. Just overuse and overtraining, from two 10K races two weeks apart and too many speed workouts.

Even though the pain is gone, I'm taking a few weeks off running. It's my chance to heal up and to do all the things I neglected in the final weeks of training.

Like muscle conditioning class. The instructor invented a whole new way to make lunges even worse. Eight full lunges, eight lunges from the halfway point to the ground, eight lunges from the top to the halfway point. And then repeat this madness. And then again.

I knew I'd be sore. I didn't know how sore. I'm very sore. So when that B.A.A. email came in, I grimaced.

Good thing the half marathon is in October.

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