Almost back!

I haven't felt up to blogging for the past few weeks because I haven't had much to say. I haven't been running and I didn't feel the need to keep reminding myself of how much I missed it. Finally I am at a point were I am making slow, but steady progress. I have been following Courtney's advice to taking it really, really slow and ice after every bit of exercise. This is the type of injury that go on and on for months if you don't let it fully heal. I definitely don't want to do that.

My recovery so far has included 1 full week of rest followed by 2 weeks of stretching and walking. I made my return to running with a test run of 1:00 running followed by 2:00 of walking on October 20th. While that felt fine during the run, I noticed the next day that my calf felt really tight. It wasn't necessarily painful, but it definitely didn't feel normal. I took two days off after that and then started again with 0:30 of running and 2:30 of walking. It was slow and a bit frustrating, but I was pain/tightness free the next day.

I think it might be time for new shoes!

Since then I have been "running" every other day and slowly increasing my run time while decreasing the time spent walking. Fortunately Michigan was enjoying a very warm fall or these walks would have been pretty miserable. It is hard to stay warmed up when most of your time is spend walking! On Halloween I was up to 2:00 of running and 1:00 of walking. I was grateful that this was mostly running since it was super cold and I hadn't bothered to check the weather. 41 degrees + wind + shorts is not a great combo.

My plan is to spend another 3 weeks running progressively longer intervals and getting back to running 5 days per week. At that point I will be 8 weeks post injury. I will then spend another 4 weeks just focusing on increasing distance while keeping the pace easy. When I reach 12 weeks post injury (December 22) I should be able to start doing speed work without any risk of re-injury. So that's the plan. Assuming I can stick to it without becoming too impatient!