Still Recovering

One week following my lost to The BiggTree, I'm still on the mend. Its been painful at times and with the recent nice weather spell - annoying. Monday morning I hurt like hell. Honestly, I'm not sure how I managed to make it to work. But, I figured if I can run the last half mile on this bum wheel, I certainly owed to my co-workers to get my ass into work. Lets face it, I work at a hospital and I was going there regardless. So I called my Primary Care Physician and got a series of x-rays done along with an exam. The x-rays didn't revel any fractures, although a stress fracture wouldn't show up at this point any way. So for the time being we were treating it as a very severe strain of the right ankle.

My doctor had given me strict orders not to work the ankle in anyway. That meant I was forbidden to run/walk on the treadmill, elliptical, and even biking was out of the question. She didn't say I had to stop weightlifting though! So Wednesday I was back in the gym doing my usual upper body weight training. I could tell the run had taken a lot out of me as I simply couldn't push the weights I was used too. Friday's workout was even worse.

Friday was a check point day. If I hadn't improved somewhat , we planned on having the ankle re-imaged to look for a stress fracture. Friday came and I was was feeling better, although it was nothing to write home about. All week long I was icing the ankle 2 to 3 times a day , taking large amounts of Ibuprofen and wearing an aircast (even while sleeping). After an exchange of emails, my doctor and I decided to give the ankle another week. If by then I'm not feeling significantly better we would setup an appointment with Orthopedics.

Yesterday I completely crashed. I really hadn't had a lot of recovery time since the race. Prior family commitments resulted in going to bed past ten in the evenings and getting up at six for work had taken its toll. So I missed out on a trip to the Minnesota Zoo with my wife and son. I don't think I got out of bed until 1:30 or 2pm. Even after a shower and a good meal, I really never got the cobwebs out. While I waiting for them to come home, I spent the afternoon trying to walk correctly. All week long I had been hobbling along without really bearing weight or flexing my right ankle. This was resulting in my leg below the knee to begin to stiffen up. After a dinner out with my wife, I went to bed early.

Today, my body woke up on its own around 7:30 am. The right ankle had stiffened over night but I feel a quite a bit better than I did on Friday. I've been spending the day catching up on some reading and concentrating on walking with the correct form. Tylenol has really helped today and now I'm starting to think about getting on a stationary bike late in the week (even if its only for a few minutes).

The silver lining to this mess is, it's allowed me to concentrate on my weight lifting. I've notice some form flaws in a couple of my exercises that I've since corrected. I'm also thinking about changing up the routine a little to mix in more compound movements (chin ups and parallel bar dips) over the targeted exercises I had been doing.