Disastrous running year

Well what a year its been. I have hardly managed to string more than a couple of injury free runs together since March! The year started so well, with my parkrun PB of 17:49 back in February, but since then its been injury-recovery-injury pretty much all the way.

All these months on and my right calf still isn't right. In fact I'm currently in a state where I can't even walk normally. I spent 6 or 7 weeks seeing a physio earlier in the year. Whilst I was seeing him I must have re-injured myself 3 or 4 times. And since then its been another 3 or 4 times. The most recent was last Thursday when for some unknown reason I decided to go for a couple of  laps round the block, when I had previously decided to leave it for a few weeks. Anyway, given that it was going well and the leg was feeling fine I slowly built the pace until the inevitable happened and the calf started to ache more and more. Come the next morning and I was back to full-on hobbling. Why do I do it?

I have now decided once and for all that any running I do in the remainder of the year will be very slow jogging, if at all! There is the one problem with this, that being that I have agreed to run at parkrun this coming weekend with my sister-in-law. That should be 10 minute mile pace or thereabouts, so hopefully I'll be ok. But perhaps I should be sensible and pull out of that too.

I have found that even when I am hobbling I can cycle without any problems. My current fitness plan is therefore to get on the static bike when I can and hopefully the odd ride out in the coming weeks may be possible too. I just have to make sure I do it, because its so easy not to bother.

I must ensure that I do the stretching and strengthening of the calf this time or it is never going to get better.

I can't even begin to think when I may be able to get back to something like full pace at parkrun or anywhere near my best. At the moment I doubt that my calf will ever by up to it. I just have to do everything I can to try to make that happen. I think I should in theory be able to aim for early spring next year. I have to come back slowly and sensibly and make sure that I don't push the injury this time. Fingers crossed I'll get back to those times eventually.