Fed Up

I can train through rain. I'm ok with that. Snow? Fine. I did it all through the horrible winter last year. Even in minus 30 degree temps. It was hard but it was fine. Long swims in the late evenings/early mornings? Check. What I can't seem to deal with is being injured. Of course, being a little hurt and having to take time off is one thing, but this is getting pretty ridiculous since now I'm completely losing motivation. It started in February last year with ITB crap. I didn't really get it sorted out; it was involved all the way up in my hip. It was bad enough that it meant my running speedwork was basically nonexistant. I was getting it worked on, felt like it was beginning to improve, barely, by the end of June. That's when I crashed and broke my elbow.

That kinda forced time off.

I started healing up from that, only for the ITB/hip issue come roaring back to the point where I couldn't run a 10k with any sort of grace. It totally wasted my USAT Nationals and scrapped my last two (expensive and big) races of the year since I couldn't run for even a meager 5 minutes without excruciating pain. So then I took more time off, and time seeing people to try and get it sorted out. Then I finally felt like I was getting it figured out, and had a great first-ever cross race. Then I crashed again, November this time, and this time destroyed my Ulnar Collateral Ligament in my thumb. Well, you kind of need your thumb to hold on to bike handlebars, you know? I couldn't do anything resembling real training for awhile after that. I slowly came back around in the winter, using my trusty trainer to get some non-balance-required miles in and slowly built up running miles again.

I have had a great late winter/early spring thus far with already putting a century in on my bike before April, and having taken first overall in a 10 miler trail race (Gasp! That NEVER happens to me!!). The only problem is that ever since that trail race, my ankle has been wrong. I know I did bad with not running enough trails before the race, but I didn't think I'd actually have a problem with my ankle. With all the other things going on in my body I figured it'd be ITB (there was some of that, but it's mostly gone, now) or plantar fascia (there's that occasionally, too). Oh and all this joy is on the left side. My right side is perfectly fine. Now after the trail race it was hurting, but I figured it'd be a few days and all would be back to normal. WRONG. It's been a full month minus one day since the race and my ankle still hurts. Yes I've had it looked at, yes it feels (like a million times) better than it did before I had it adjusted by my chiropractor. Zapper therapy makes it feel better, too. The thing is it's so finicky. It's fine one day, and I can run for a bit - 30 minutes even one day - with no pain. The next day, however I'm unable to even walk right. Riding bothers it but doesn't seem to make it too much worse, and if I try and "stretch" it (knee bent - ankle isolating) it hurts. It feels fine if I'm just stretching my calves with knees straight. Doing yoga makes it feel better, too.

This is just the latest in my wonderfully long string of injuries. So much for my time off of school to train, right? Oh well. It's raining today anyways so I didn't really want to go run.