Gambling

We've all been there. Something hurts. But is it injured or is that pain part of the ebb and flow of training. And if injured, how do you deal with it and how soon do you return to normal activity.

I have been teetering on injury since my left achilles flared up again over Christmas. To make things more interesting, I started playing indoor volleyball again the first week in January. My right knee didn't take well to the repeated jumping and side to side motion required during relatively competitive volleyball.

Still, while neither of these issues are serious, I have been taking it easy since Phoenix (notice that the marathon happened after both these "injuries" came before the marathon). Neither of these injuries were a direct result of running and the marathon didn't make either injuries worse (in my unofficial medical opinion).

However, like all wise athletes, I have been taking it relatively easy since the marathon. I have only run once (six miles) on Saturday. The rest of my time has been spent on either the elliptical or in the pool. Some of this is due to the weather. But some of it is me subconsiously trying to take it easy knowing that I want to accomplish a lot this spring and summer and that I can't do any of it sidelined with injuries.

So today, I hit the gym for a swim. I felt great in the pool and 2000 meters later, I got out feeling refreshed. I then hit a stationary bike (mainly to see how the knee would react to me sitting in on a spinning class). No problem. So after about 1o minutes on the cycle, a treadmill opened up. Without hesitation, I jumped on. 15 minutes and 1.5 miles later, I called it a day.

Pain free.

I hope the snow melts enough that I can go for an easy run tomorrow!