Acronychal
When 2013 started, I made myself a goal of getting in at least 1,000 kilometers of running this year. I’ve done more than this before, and it seemed reasonable. That is, until I got injured in mid June. On a fun, 5km obstacle course run following a 100km charity run/walk through the mountains I completed in May, I fell down and cut my knee really bad. I finished the race (and in good time!), but it took over 6 weeks before my knee healed (I still have a fancy scar).
Happy to be back out, in early August I started running again. On my first training trail run back, at the 8km point on a 20km run, I hit my ankle hard going down a mountain and it bent in a very unnatural way. Taking a few moments, I felt like I could continue and did, until the 19km mark. I hobbled the last kilometer down the mountain. After going through some imaging tests on a trip to the doctor the next day, I learned that I partially tore my inferior extensor retinaculum. Ouch.
The past few weeks my ankle has finally been feeling good enough to road run, and to slowly trail run. It’s been over three months and it is still not normal. I can feel it especially if I’m on the trails: one wrong move and I’ll be back to limping. Will that keep me off the road and trails? Of course not! But it will keep me extremely cautious.
These injuries have basically stopped me from running since mid June, over 5 months now. As you can see in the above graph, my running progress towards my goal of 1,000 kilometers this year hasn’t progressed much since my first injury. If I am to complete this goal, I have exactly 34 days to do it.
Two days ago I went for a road run and felt pretty good, so I’m going to give it a shot. I have 349 kilometers to go, which over 34 days is just over 10 kilometers per day. That’s going to be a challenge. If I think about it weekly it might be better: 72km per week. If I divide this up over 5 days, I can do one long run of 22km, two medium 15km runs, and two short 10km runs to reach my goal.
I don’t know if I’ll be successful, but I’m going to try it. My plan for the week:
- Day 1: 22km
- Day 2: rest
- Day 3: 15km
- Day 4: 10km
- Day 5: 15km
- Day 6: 10km
- Day 7: Rest
If I give myself only 5 days to achieve this goal, if I miss a day or can’t go too long for some reason I can always make it up on one of my off days. For example, instead of one long 22km run I could do two 11km runs and still have one day off. If I can’t keep this up for a week, I think my goal will be even further away, but I’ll try and will just take it day by day.
Okay, two running posts in a row is probably too much. Something different for next time!
