See Diva Run

Runners are very goal driven people. We follow our plans, run the miles on our schedules and check things off our lists. A few months ago I realized I could still reach 2,000 Nike+ miles by the end of the year if I logged an average of 150 miles/month. That isn’t exactly out of my normal range, but in November I started suffering from intense heel pain. At first it was just in the morning, but eventually it was all day. Recently I’ve been experiencing sharp pain in my shins. I used The Stick, iced my feet, took ibuprofen and stretched, but I also kept running. By last week I was down to my last 80 miles, but when I woke up Saturday I was just so darn tired, I could barely drag myself out of bed. Then I got a call from work. That afternoon I decided to run errands instead of run. I figured I could make up the distance. Sunday I woke up feeling just as tired as Saturday. I did a few odd jobs around the house and then put on my running clothes. Just as I was getting ready to go out the door, the phone rang. My ex-husband (my son’s father) had a heart attack that morning and was in the hospital. We had been planning to attend a family reunion with my son & daughter-in-law that afternoon, but now they were rushing to see his dad. I stayed home near the phone, waiting to hear how he was doing. I’m happy to report that he is going to be OK, but things were pretty tense for a while. I thought about running on the treadmill to relieve my stress and anxiety, but opted out. I have been so focused on the goal of 2,000 miles, I have not taken into account the toll it is taking on my body. If I was smart enough to opt out of the the SOS race when I had a gaping hole in my knee, why not be smart enough to opt out of 2,000 miles before I do some serious damage? So, I didn’t run yesterday, and I didn’t run today. I’m not even feeling stressed. I’m just feeling tired and achy. Oddly enough, I think my shins hurt more today than they did while I was running, but my heels feel a little better. So I might run again this year, but I might not. It just depends on how I feel. When I do start running again, I’m going to take it easy. I had already planned to cut back on the mileage in 2008, in favor of Furman F.I.R.S.T plan, with 3 quality work outs per week, and 3 days of cross-training. I’ve never been good at staying with a cross-training program, but I also never ran over 1,600 miles in a year before 2007, so I think it is possible.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.