Recently, I’ve been attempting to decide whether I’m injured or not. The good news is that my knee is feeling better. Or more accurately, I don’t notice it feeling a little weak nearly as often. I wouldn’t say may knee is strong, but I don’t have quite the same fear of it being injured as I did a couple weeks back. I stopped wearing my knee brace last week and my knee felt fine during and after my 5 mile run last weekend. I’m still too close to the potential injury for me to be 100% mentally comfortable with it, however I no longer cringe every time I take a step.
This is great news as I have a 50 mile race coming up early next month. I haven’t done any training since Boulder Field with my longest single run being 5 miles and highest weekly mileage a whopping 20 miles. One of my key ultra philosophies is that I would rather be 50% trained than 5% injured. The thought process is that any little injury will be greatly magnified during an ultra event and you’re more likely to drop because of it than if you were only partially trained. This upcoming race was going to be my senior thesis on the subject until . . .
I rolled my freaking ankle during a one mile run this morning. I used to roll my ankles fairly regularly on the trails when I first started out, however I haven’t had this problem over the past couple years. Well, it was raining out this morning so the roads were wet. I decided not to take a headlamp even though it was dark out, misplaced exactly where I was on the road, and just slipped off the side. I didn’t go down, but it was extremely painful. I kept running though and after a quarter mile the pain bled away and my ankle loosened up. There was no pain by the time I was finished and it felt OK for the next couple hours. But as I progressed through the day, sitting at my desk job, it started to tighten back up on me. I don’t think I’ve done any major damage to it, but will need to spend the next couple days taking it a little easy and stretching it out at every opportunity.
Sometimes if it’s not one thing, then it’s something else. I guess I’ll just have to roll with it. Pun intended, of course.