I am presently still on the injury couch. On Monday this week, I pulled a calf muscle whilst walking from one of my workplaces to the other, just a 20-minute walk! (I know! Right? A walk!) My leg is recovering nicely, and I think I will be able to get back to running again after 14 days. So thank you everyone, for all the well wishes! 🥰
However, I have done a bit of detective work and am now almost certain about the crime scene where the key training events happened that likely contributed to my current harm.
The insight into the mystery came from spending time with my diary, my ever so indulgent witness to all my fitness crimes committed! No runs? The pages stay empty! Indulge in too many carbs? The section of food tells the tale. My running achievements? Smiley faces, exclamation points and tacky stickers. I know … I know,- why does a grown runner need tacky stickers? She needs to stick them in her diary, of course, as they came with it. We all have our guilty, little pleasures.
So, I started the interrogation, using some colours to make the patterns jump out like murderous knives from the page. Once I knew, I knew that I should have known! It’s an obvious one, a trivial one, one where I should have prevented the crime before it occurred. Nevertheless, I had to see it written in black and white in my own handwriting to acknowledge that I might have been able to avoid this shackling stint on the injury couch!
So this was the timeline in the run-up to my pulled leg muscle incident, my diary giving testimony to the facts:
By August this year, the full pages evidence that I was running three times a week. But during September, the entries become scarcer. Work is mentioned in the margins. A big submission of an application on a day with no run, and no row!
A few smiley faces here and there demonstrate I felt fine at that time, and numbers and NRC titles point towards me making slow but constant progress through my NRC training plan.
In the last week of September, a Covid-like flu struck me down for two weeks, evident in my diary with two empty pages with no scribbles, no runs and no rows in sight. Only a few dumbbell workouts are scribbled in the margins, adding a few paltry minutes to the totals.
And then, after the long gap of illness, there is my Saturday come-back run! And I see it labelled as the last run of my NRC plan. A long run. ”Long” for me, that is. Big smiley face in thick blue ink. And the page before? A rather sad face and a squiggly thermometer. My two-week illness.
But that first come-back-from-illness run went fine. In fact, it was more than fine. I remember it felt brilliant! And I celebrated by adding the pace to the diary entry, equivalent to a “woohoo”, as it was one of my fastest runs for quite a while.
I remember reasoning at the time that taking a break (even if due to illness) is sometimes not a bad thing, right? I excitedly started my next plan, but only managing to run once per week. A crime all on its own.
During this time, so the diary entries evidenced, I managed to get quite a few rows in, but by October, I reduced my rows to 20min sessions. I had started to get that burning upper back pain while rowing, the one that still remains a bit of a mystery. But my aerobic fitness felt brilliant, even after my illness.
So I continued to run more long runs. And yes, “long” for me. And getting back to regular running, I thus must have ramped up too fast. In fact, I didn’t ramp up at all, I simply carried on from the point before my illness. “Aha”, I hear you say! “It’s elementary, my dear CBDB. This is the main scene of the crime!”
But that run wasn’t what caused the pulled muscle, which was still three pages away, or rather three weeks in the future. And only three runs away. One run per week. A clue worthy of the candlestick in Miss Scarlett’s hands in the library.
Because, the crime was this. Aerobically, propped up by my constant rowing, I was able to handle each run. But that feeling of fitness? It was false! It was lying to me! It masked the fact that my muscles and ligaments in my legs had lost their resilience during the illness, without ever recovering it. The crime I committed is scattered over five pages of my diary, like blood splatters of a Quentin Tarantino film.
Guilty, so the jury must surely deduce.
Yes, dear reader, it was me! I had committed this heinous crime to myself.
And I have been judged, found wanting and condemned to two weeks purgatory on the injury couch, followed by a much lengthier comeback.
Careful training, everyone!
And remember, a fitness crime is never a victimless crime. As such, the culprit is almost always found and punished. And the culprit is always you.
Help, Advice, Calf Injury
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