Super Bummed

I am truly blaming my most recent injury on Mizuno! I swear I've played by the rules only increasing my mileage by 10 percent a week and I have cross-trained trying to minimize the impact from running. Well, I got on Dr. Google today and started reading about the symptoms and it seemed to match achilles tendonitis (tendinitis?). Then I got on the running forums and it talked about how it was so hard to recover from AT. Great! Then I was massaging the back of my heel trying to assess my pain. I noticed a crunching feeling last night and it was definitely still there today. It's like nothing I have ever felt and I knew it was not good. I had my coworker touch it and she was severely grossed out. I called my doctor at 10am and she had an opening at 3:30pm. Yay! Love their practice. Meanwhile I got some ice from the nurse and that seemed to help it.

Cut to doctor. I gave her a brief history, been going on maybe 2 weeks, but wasn't bad until I ran 12 miles Sunday. Ooops. She said, "first of all, good for you running 12 miles." Haha! So she checked it out and had me do some things and asked if it hurt. She said she thought it was AT. UGHHHHH!!! Then she had me face the wall and touched the back of both ankles and at one point I yelled out in pain. It's weird, but sometimes if you touch a certain point there is this brief shooting, hot pain. I know you're thinking this sounds awesome. So she said no working out for a week and take 600mg of ibuprofen three times a day. And then I said, "yeah, I was going to take some time off running, but what about cross-training?" She said, "nope, I know telling someone like you to not run is tough, but I really want you to take a week off and not exercise at all." I said "okay, I know." And she said, "I mean it. You really need to take a week off." And I know I do, but damn telling me not to exercise for a week is like telling me not to breathe. I can't remember the last time I took off more than a day. I just hope it gets better and it's not a nagging injury like everyone talked about on those running forums.

I know it could be way worse and four or five months ago I would have been super mad and probably continued to exercise. I am going to take the time off though and more if necessary. And with that I will leave you with this quote because I think it's inspiring and can be applied to many aspects of life.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." -The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich