Answering the Mountains' Call: May 28

When I first started my blog, I was inspired to do so because I enjoyed following Anton Krupicka’s blog which featured weekly updates on his running. I’ve never managed to post anything weekly and in recent months I rarely get anything up on my blog. The point of saying this is I’ll try to start giving weekly updates of my running and hopefully tack up a few pictures from the week as well.

This week I ran Tuesday through Thursday for about an hour and a half, then took the rest of the week off. I did a few short walks on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that was it for the week. The reason for so little running is that my left calf has been bothering me for a few weeks and I finally decided to just stop running for a few days.

In early May I went for an hour and a half run with my friends Nick in Cary and the next day my left ankle hurt too much to run. It took me a few days to figure out what was wrong, but soon I realized it was peroneal tendonitis stemming from a very tight upper left calf. With a bit of foam rolling my left calf started feeling a bit better. It took a week and half, but then I was back to running about 1.5 hours in the morning before class without any pain. That weekend (May 19-20^th) I ran a little under 3 hours each day and felt pretty darn good.

Then Monday came and after making the climb up McCulloch Peak, my left calf started to bother me on the descent. By the time I reached Soap Creek (about 1 hour into my run), my lateral left calf was almost too painful to run on. I had progressively slowed my pace on the descent, but to no avail, so I stopped in Soap Creek and stretched my calf for a minute or two. I don’t think I’ve every stretched during a run before, so it was obviously pretty bad. Still, I was parked at Oak Creek, so I made a beeline from Soap Creek to Oak Creek to finish up my run. My calf didn’t feel any worse, but it certainly didn’t feel any better by the time I finished.

Although my calf hurt, I tried to keep running that week. I just wanted to be out in the forest enjoying the warm spring weather and watching the forest change. New flowers start popping up in March and continue until June, so I like to see the whole progression. My calf hurt all week although it felt fine on our Memorial Day weekend snowcamping trip.

I stubbornly tried to run at the beginning of this week but came to my senses realizing that my calf was OK for low impact activities like skiing and walking but running was just too much. At this point I’m doing some foam rolling, stretching, and strengthening exercises as well as a little walking. I plan to try to run Monday.

I’ve found myself reflecting on why I’ve been injured a lot over the last two years. Since Western States I’ve been injured frequently and typically only get 5-6 weeks of running between injuries. My running has been very inconsistent for the last couple years and I think that play a role in being injured. But I think the way I view running has a bigger role. When I first started running, I ran because I loved to be in the forest and my main goal was to spend as much time outside as I could. As time progressed I got more wrapped up in competition. I’ve always been competitive, but I slowly turned running into a daily task of training for a race. The last two years have been very frustrating and not very satisfying. It’s time to be a kid in the forest again.

Here's some pictures from today's walk.