Dog in Top Athlete Injury Shock!
Well, I may be out of the Olympics. Sheva can’t understand what has happened to her new 5k runs- she was actually up to about 10k, with all her running back and to, and was even starting to get a little winded. Yes, we were up to 5k, running 30 minutes at a time. Now I am reduced to sitting with my feet up ( poor me) and NO RUNNING for at least the next week or two. I have been laid low by an Achilles tendon injury, probably as a result of running up a steep incline.
Of course, I didn’t stop running until I had ignored it for three days, and got to the stage where I couldn’t walk, let alone run. So, it will now take a while to get better, but fear not, this is temporary! After all, there is still a long time before the marathon- nearly a year still, so actually it is a good thing that the injuries are happening now, and not later.
After surfing the web for advice, it turns out, firstly that there is a lot of rubbish on the web. Some sites claim that you can keep running, others say that you should rest for 6 weeks. Some claim that static stretching is best, others recommend dynamic stretching. The best article I found was in www.thestretchinghandbook.com, and deals with the whole process of injury and return to running. I liked the optimistic view that proper treatment can result in the tendon being as strong as or stronger than it was before the injury. According to this site, there are several important stages in treating an achilles injury, the most important things being;
1) No weight bearing activities ( unfortunately had to do the shopping though) until it doesn’t hurt.
2) Ice and rest for the first three days.After the first three days a hot water bottle and deep massage ( very nice even if you don’t have an injury, actually)
3) Stretching carefully to keep the range of movement.
4) Gradually working up to full fitness with exercises to strengthen and loosen leg muscles and regain power.
The most annoying thing about having to miss running is that Oren is meanwhile skipping like a large gazelle round his 5k route, and has had no trouble at all, despite skimping on his stretching, completely disregarding his heart beat target range and doing any hill he feels like at a sprint. He is also getting better at chess than me, which just adds insult to injury.
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