A Running Blog With No Running

Over more than two decades of endurance racing and I've had relatively few injuries. In my younger days I would stress about lost fitness and get frustrated when I was injured. Now I've chilled a bit more. Which is handy since my ankle injury is taking a good chunk of time out from running.


It's easy to say it's just running and there are more important things in life. It's true there is. That approach never seemed to take the disappointment and frustration away when forced out of action. Maybe I'm getting older and wiser, or I don't care as much, but I'm definitely in a better mental place than with previous injuries. It's a bit of a chance to focus on other things. It's been over a week and for the most part I'm comfortable with the situation. Complaining won't get me anywhere, and self pity is only detrimental. Plus my wife had did more damage to her ankle earlier this year. At least we get to share moonboots. Best just to focus on what I need to do.



At the moment it's hard to tell if all is going as it should. The pain levels are mainly non-existent with only a few moments of low level pain. The initial phase is immobilisation with a combination of moonboot and taping lasting about two weeks. In this time the hope is to protect the ligaments from any further damage while the inflammation process does it thing of removing the debris and laying the down the initial repair matrix. Bring on the collagen. I'm well aware this initial matrix is basically a mess that is meant to hold everything together. The problem is there will be little of the functional elastic and movement qualities needed in the ligaments. I'm putting my trust in my physio to balance this out. I'm keen to get to the next phase where I add movement into the mix.



Movement and rehabilitation exercises will be easier to deal with. Rather than just waiting for the body to do it's thing I will be actively doing something. So in essence I will be training. Definitely not running to begin with, but still it is training. Bit by bit.