Decision Day

Today's Tuesday practice should have been an easy one. I knew the workout ahead of time and depending on the practice this is a good thing if the practice is easy-ish or a bad thing if you're forced to dreaded a hard practice for days (like the time we knew of a the race pace 600 after 20 minute hills;). Anyways it should have been easy: change-of-pace 40,30,15 x 6 with 90 seconds in between.

I started the 20-minute warm up with a taped foot designed to support the plantar area but today it wasn't enough- it still felt painful. Not terrible sharp pain but a very present nagging pain. It's similar to the annoying kid in class who sits behind you and constantly taps at your shoulder. For me, this shoulder tap pain was a constant reminder that my foot was not right.  I began the workout conservative mostly to see how it would feel and in all honesty I don't think I could have gone much faster. I was favouring my right foot and my left leg was throbbing as a result off the extra weight. It didn't help the my quads were exhausted from the 90-minute bike session from yesterday. I thought biking hard would probably make me tired today but I chose to anyways since I knew today's workout was going to be a bit easier.

Long story short, I couldn't push myself to anaerobic threshold the way I should have in a change of pace workout. I was really stiff and concerned for my foot. I could picture my plantar fascia ripping in slow motion the same way wrestlers tear apart those white shirts as they walk into the ring. I decided to cool down on the bike and while everyone else did 150 sprints in spikes I watched from the SFU gym windows as I did 10x 15 seconds of pick ups to numb my frustration.

Today was decision day for me. My injury is here, it's not going away quickly and I need to deal with it before it becomes a big problem. I'm choosing to finally listen to my body and heal this sucker so I can get back to the running. I miss it already! Remember this feeling every time you don't want to run and when you get back on the track realize how fortunate you are to run.