Ready...Set...Go?

Ever since the half marathon relay in San Antonio last November, I've been nursing an injured achilles. I pretty much stayed off of it until the beginning of January in the hopes that I could start the spring training season healthy. Yeah, not so much...

An achilles injury is one that takes weeks or months to heal properly, and even then it's not always 100%. I did heat/cold therapy, wrapped it and stayed off of it for what seemed like a very long time. I'm not the best patient, and I'm even less inclined to take care of an injury unless it hurts. If it doesn't hurt, it's fine! Right? Uh...right?

In January, I joined the DRC spring training program to help get my pace up and to run with people that were at my same fitness level. I was doing really well and even shaved 5:36 from my PR on the DRC Frigid 5K! The time received on this race was used to place you in the proper pace groups for the training program. I was so excited about the new training season! The first few training runs went great, and my pace leader even asked me if I wanted to move up to a faster group. I declined because I'd just come off the achilles injury and wanted to take it easy. Then, it happened. On a 5-mile training run I had to stop and walk the last 1.5 miles. The pulling and nagging pain of my right achilles had started again. Damn it! I was so disappointed. I tried telling myself that it was just a minor ache because my achilles has weakened from the injury and not running for almost 2 months.

I've mostly been off it for about a month. The last two weeks I've been off of it completely and only doing cardio on the elliptical...so boring. This past Saturday was my first attempt to see how it was doing. I ran very little, but walked about 5.5 miles. More than anything my calves and shins are stiff because of how little I've been running these past few months. I could tell the achilles was a little sore. Of course, some of the discomfort could've come from standing on a concrete floor the night before at the House of Blues while The Reverend Horton Heat entertained me. My feet were killing me by the time we got home, and I had on comfy shoes!

I've missed so many races because of this injury, that I'm reluctant to sign up for anything. Besides the disappointment, they're expensive! I want to run the Hogeye Half Marathon in April, but it's still a giant maybe. However, I've already registered for the White Rock Lake Centennial Half in May. Here's to hoping.

I just want to finish ONE half marathon. Is that too much to ask? I think not!