The one thing that I thought I had taken out of my injury last year was that I need to listen to my body but I guess I didn't actually learn my lesson.
Doing a short fast workout about 3.5 weeks ago on a Thursday my calf/achilles area felt tight and was bugging me a bit. I didn't think much of it because I've had the same exact feeling many times before. The next however it was still tight but I was just doing a nice easy run so I'd tough it out and then it was the weekend so I could stay off it and it would be fine. It actually felt better the next day for a longer workout and I didn't notice it much until afterwards. The next day I could definitely feel it when I got up but I told my self I'd just get through my long run and hopefully it would loosen up after a couple miles (which it did) and then I'd take the next day off from running and bike. The next day however was gorgeous out and I decided to move the off day to Wednesday because it wasn't bugging me much. The next day however I was on my feet all day at work going up and down a lot of stairs in waders and my leg was bugging me before we even started to warm up. Again though I decided to push onward and hope it loosened up on the warm up (which it did) and then get through the workout and definitely take Wednesday off. The workout was some fast quarters which was probably the worst thing it could have been and my leg got progressively worse as the workout went on and I even considered stopping before the last one but once again I had to decided to just push on and deal with it after the workout. I finally pushed too far though and as I turned onto the final straight and started to make a move to pass on the outside, I felt a pop in my leg and I was done.
At first I thought I had ruptured my achilles so obviously the calf strain is a lot better than that and I was relieved to discover I wouldn't need any surgery. That relief is little comfort to me though when thinking about how stupid I was and how easily this could have been a few days off rather than a few weeks or more.
I know the factors main factors that lead to it:
1. Switching to 3 workouts a week from 2 without backing off my other runs
2. Doing all my workouts in spikes
3. Not doing a good enough job of getting loose before my workouts in the cold weather
4. All the biking I did this fall winter got my cardio system in better shape than my legs
Even though I should have paid better attention to all of these and done a few things to compensate for them, my body still gave me an out and I ignored it. If somethings a little sore for a day or 2 and goes away it's one thing. The fact that this got worse and I still tried to push through it is what really has me angry at myself and no one else.
There's never a good time for an injury but this injury came at an especially bad time, just a week before my season opener. I've started to do PT and have been trying to take it as easy as possible but it's still not going to be an easy road back. I'm trying to do everything the right way and listen to my PT but it's definitely frustrating when all I can do is stretch and rest. I did nothing but stretch for 2 weeks before I got the go ahead to bike and I'm still only up to 40 minutes. There's not much else I can do until the calf finishes healing and then we can start to rebuild the strength.
For the record, I was in shape to run right around 4:00 when I went out and we were just starting to really get into some speed work. I was in really good shape but I ended up costing myself the chance to see how good.
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