Three months...for three months I couldn't run. I felt like I was in prison. I didn't know it at the time but I had a torn soleus calf muscle and some other weird strain I'd never hear of.
I gave my doctors holy hell and my physical therapist too. I whined like a baby to anyone who'd listen to my woes.
I'd show up for physical therapy and they'd ask me "How do you feel?", and I'd reply with "I just tried to run and it hurt so bad I had to stop". Good god if you only heard their scolding "YOU DID WHAT?, YOU KNOW YOU ARENT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT,WHAT IN GODS NAME ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH YOU?" Week after week I kept trying.
I was pathetic!
I even went as far as locating an anti gravity treadmill to try and run on it and get the much needed release running gave me. It didn't work..Ugh that was a very long drive.
I'm a very determined girl...and i am using the word "very" in a awfully big way.
One day while hunting for seaglass on a local beach I started walking fast and then tried to do a very slow exaggerated run form just to see if it would hurt like all the other surfaces I'd run on. I couldn't believe I was finally running. I cried like a big baby and shouted out as loud as I could.."I CAN RUN AGAIN! I CAN RUN AGAIN!" Well I got as far as a quarter of a mile before the pain set in. But I didn't care, I "felt" the run in me and it felt amazing! And of all the surfaces to run on, the one I liked least helped me the most!
So later that night I walked back into my physical therapists office and said "Okay, I'll listen now" I told them I just needed to know that someday I will run again. They responded with a "Sentence" of two long weeks of no running, no physical activities period. And that's a story I'll share another day... :)
The words my physical therapist said to me once make me smile every time I remember them...
"You know...you runners are a really strange breed, a breed like no other". Yep that's me, that's us :)
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