Sunday, January 18, 2009

Miles Logged

It's been a long two weeks since the achilles fiasco. The first week progressively got worse and one week ago, and one from the injury, I was in a fair amount of pain. As the tissue was attempting to regenerate, I was constantly at war with how to treat the injury site. "Keep it covered, or keep it open to air." After a week of dressings with antibiotic ointments, I talked with one of my sports med doc friends and she said to air it out, especially at night. Once I started that the scabs formed and the real healing began. The point now is not to tear off the scabs and reverse the whole process. The other problem I am at war with is keeping my heels warm. Prior to this afternoon, I was wearing clogs. With the air temps in the -20F range, any trip to the car and work had my heels screaming with a burn for warmth. So now I sat with scabby heels and the desire to run.

The first layer on the heels would be some compeed, followed by a gauze wrap secured with athletic tape. The first pair of shoes I put on still rubbed too much. The second wasn't much better, but when I put on the trusty NB 790's all things would click. Up to the treadmill I went locked the pace in at 8:30's for the first mile. It was a bit tender but after that first mile I had the green light and made my way for the half hour mark. After settling the pace at 7:50's - 8:00's, I would get comfortable and make my first run in two weeks. Nothing special, but a run in the books and looking forward to more this week. Once I have confidence in not tearing the tissue again I will slowly get the mileage going.

On the topic of moving forward, I have officially entered the 2009 Grandma's Marathon. I have about 22 weeks to get ready. Ten of those will be easy, base building mileage and the last 11 or so will be marathon focus with hopefully a little help from a certain coach. We will have to check and see about that.
Here's to cool northeasters on June 20th!!!

Totals: 33:00   4.1 miles

Years Totals: 29.5 miles

3 comments:

ChrisG said...

Great to hear that you are back running again. It was almost too ironic seeing you at the SS race yesterday.

A coach in 2009 for G Robertson?

Where can I apply?

Don said...

Glad you're keeping it warm. That will help with the healing more than anything.

We three just registered for Grandma's too.

Gregg said...

Chris... as negative as I talked of that snowshoe race it sure hurt me not to be out there for one loop with you. Maybe the half next year.

Don... you know it! The Achilles has so poor blood flow to begin with, and keeping them warm has been a chore. I even wear wool socks to bed!
Maybe we will have decent weather this g-mas.?