Lost in a world of walking, biking, and weight lifting... BUT NO RUNNING!

Suggest to almost any non-runner (OK not any but a lot!) that they should lace up the shoes and take a few laps around the track, and more often then not you'll be faced with a whole myriad of excuses or possible injuries they could immediately be facing just short of spontaneous combustion.  "It's bad for your knees... I have asthma... it kills my back... your ovaries could fall out!"  Okay maybe that ones a little old but still these are just a few of the possible claimed repercussions from running even a bit or jogging.  For years I've shrugged these off knowing that by far the most dangerous thing for a runner is their own ambitions to beat the clock.  Yes the possibility of getting hurt is their and always present, but is it the next dangerous thing behind down hill barefoot alpine helmet-less skiing?  No of course not.

Unfortunately, now though I'm on the other side of the fence and the view isn't so pretty.   More likely than not no one has noticed the long glaring lapse between posts and perhaps from the introduction you've put 2 in 2 together in which case I applaud you, but with deep despair:  I'm injured.

Weeks into my training schedule I began to notice a pain in my calves that wasn't going away.  Sure, when you start running again you have to ease into it, and their is no doubt going to be some aches and pains along the way. However, what I didn't expect was still having the same calf pain a full 8 weeks in.  Both sides were tight almost constantly, stretching seemed to do nothing for them, and the right side that had also experienced some minor Achilles heal problems in the beginning was definitely much worse off.  Then during a bleak Friday stint on the treadmill it all came to a head and one minute I was in only moderately uncomfortable, and the next I was in real pain forced to walk.

On the surface it felt like a pulled muscle, but the troubling thing is it won't go away!  I took two weeks off, got a gym membership so I could ride the stationary bike and lift hoping to improve my core, but after the waiting period as soon as I got back on the treadmill the pain came right back.  I can't help but wonder now if my deer accident on the motorcycle last summer had something to do with it.  It broke the smaller bone in my lower leg right were my calf now hurts, and to the unhappy questioning of my girlfriend I never returned to the doctor to have it checked out.

So where does that leave me?  Set back for sure, but not totally out.  Thankfully I work at a college that has a pretty great athletic training staff so first chance I get I'll pop in there to see where I should go from here.  I'm walking as much around campus as I can in these frigid temps and I've got a membership to the local gym so I'm taking the advice ignored for so long to try and strengthen my core by working on my abs (hehehe more like ab) and my total fitness (not just logging miles) in the hopes that in the end it will all help.  I've spent a good number of hours on the stationary bike as well and though its definitely not the same as running, it does excite me to try a triathlon this year.  Maybe for now I'll prepare for the biking and swimming sections first, but more to come...