Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Back at school and feeling the pressure

So I have been back at school for about a month now, and the stress of school and track is building up. Being in a graduate degree is a lot different from undergrad and I know that it has taken its toll on my athletics.

Speaking of my athletics, here is a short summary of what has been going on the last two months:

The last week I was in the Czech this summer I hurt my right ankle. I didn't do anything special, but experienced sharp pain after doing some strides. While it hurt quite a bit to move my foot in certain ways I still ran the last meet in Czech. I figured that I would have two weeks in the Netherlands to heal any injury I had and that I would be ready for Nationals. Upon my return to Canada, my ankle was still causing me pain during practices but no one seemed to know what was wrong. While in hindsight it may not have been my best decision, I decided to run Nationals and Provincials with my still injured ankle.

Once provincials were done I would have two full weeks to heal up again for summer training camp at the University of Guelph. During these two weeks I was sent to a local sport doctor so I could get an x-ray and MRI. While waiting for the tests and the subsequent results I was told not to do anything impact training (i.e. no running or jumping of any sort). So at training camp I did a lot of abs, lunges and push-ups. My original MRI date was set for October 25th (a death sentence for my pending track season) but I was lucky enough to have it moved up to September 28th!

Just last week I had my follow up meeting with the sports doctor. Going into the meeting I figured there would be two outcomes. 1) Nothing was seriously wrong with my ankle and I had wasted the now 7 weeks of training or 2) something was seriously wrong and I would need further treatment. In the end it turns out that I did fracture a bone in my foot (and probably should not have run on it) but that my seven weeks off was sufficient for healing.

So in short- I have not been running since Provincials but just recently got the ok to start training again. I am more than a little apprehensive since I do not want to injury myself again, but at the same time I may have saved my indoor season! So tomorrow is the first time this year I will get to run with my group – wish me luck :)