Well it has clearly been quite a while since I posted, I think mostly it was because I have been dealing with an injury that has kept me from running until last week. After the 40 on Dusty's birthday I noticed a lump on my achilles, I had had this lump before right after the Bear 100. I decided to take it seriously, take some time off and really get it healed so I can start 2010 strong. Well it turns out this has been a very difficult injury to get taken care of. I have tried lots of stretching, eccentric calf raises, and then added some Graston technique treatments from a good friend that is a trainer at the local university. At this point the lump was completely painless but still there. I tried running on it last week and no pain but the lump got a little larger, that is when I decided to see the local sports med doc. At the doc we did an ultrasound to check the integrity of the achilles, it showed a very small partial tear and some discongruent fibers. The doc has seen a lot of athletes and feels comfortable with me to continuing running, we also decided to try using low dose nitro patches on the achilles at night to help promote healing, there is a lot of good research about nitro patches for tendinopathies and other than the headaches it seems to be helping.
Granted injuries are part of this sport but this has been particularly difficult to deal with. I would be interested to hear what the couple of you that read my blog what you do to cope with an injury. Please post below.
Also I thought I should put up a summary of 2009: total mileage: 2015.9 miles, total hours: 281, total elevation ascent: 348, 353. Pretty good year for me, considering that in the past I have never ran more than 600 miles in a year.
Good to hear you are healing. Smart move taking it seriously from the start. Go over to the Pearl Izumi-Smith site and get a hold of Aric Manning (team manager). He battled an injury which sounds similiar to yours for all of last season. He may have some sound advice - oh yea, he's running again!
ReplyDeleteSo how do I coupe with an injury? Recognize it, respect it, and realize you're no good hurt, you have to heal, the trails will still be there when you return (usually). I did all that, it still didn't work so I had surgery. LOL:)
Good to hear from you - hopefully see you at some mountain races.
wow, quite the mileage for 2009! when you said you had a lump on your achilles, i immediately thought of a partial tear where the fibers have "squirted" out of the tendon sheath. sounds like that's what it is. i've had some tendon issues in the past (achilles and also the dorsal tendons of late, as well as the ligaments around the medial malleolus) but really just tendonitis and stiffness with pain. i've have had quite a bit of success with acupuncture. it usually takes 4 or 5 treatments (about 30 min each) for me to see some improvement. my medial malleolus injury from last May is gone, but now the dorsal foot tendonitis issue continues on (going on three months now... ). it's weird, because i don't have pain while running, but my foot seems to stiffen up overnight and i notice it in the morning. i've also had some luck with tiger balm to sore spots, but your nitro therapy has me intrigued. i'm going too look into it a bit more. best of luck to you for 2010, and i hope this issue goes away for you soon!
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