Injury Frustrations

Injuries are every athlete’s worst nightmare. There is nothing like being told you can’t do something to make you miserable. I’ve been through all of the stages of grieving:

1. Denial: My feet are totally fine. Let’s increase my long run by a mile this week and then walk around for hours.
2. Anger: This includes general swearing and aggressively doing everything I’m not supposed to do because I’m mad I can’t do it. Screw it, I’m doing the box jumps. 
3. Bargaining: If I don’t jump at all at CrossFit, I can still run, right?
4. Depression: Lying on the floor instead of doing my rehab exercises… or anything else. I’m never going to run my half marathon fast enough if I never get to run. This is horrible.
5. Acceptance: My feet hurt and I have to wear ugly shoes. It won’t last forever… right?

I’ve been wearing my “moon shoes” (also known as my old, huge, white lunar glides from high school that seriously battle space boots for the largest, ugliest shoe title) almost exclusively. Every time the soles squeak against the hallway at work or someone gives me an odd look for dressing like Working Girl I am reminded of the stupid training mistakes I made to get myself here.

But my feet no longer keep me up at night or become my obsession while I’m driving. I took all of the last two weeks off from running and instead swam or did the elliptical. I finally went to my doctor and heard the words I was avoiding “no running,” at least until my feet are better. Hopefully after an appointment with a podiatrist this week I will have a solid rehab plan and a bit of a timeline as to when I get off the hamster wheel (and out of the pool) and start really running again.