I got up this morning and was surprised to find that there was no aching from my right ankle. There was a nice bit of swelling around the Achilles tendon though unfortunately so I knew a longer run was a bad idea today.
It can take weeks to rehabilitate an Achilles tendon issue from what I understand but it is only 10 weeks today until the Walt Disney World Marathon and I am not sure how long I can back off on the running without losing even more of my running capabilities. So I have the old runners’ dilemma when trying to recover from an injury – how much is too much and too fast?
I decided I needed to at least take the dogs out this morning especially since it was a such a nice crisp fall morning. I figured I would dress to run, put on a light ankle brace and see how a light jog with the pups went. If the ankle did ok I would maybe try a bit more of a run but if it rebelled I would just walk a bit to get the dogs some exercise.
I didn’t try any faster running with the pups but a light run felt ok. So I took the pups home after a mile and I went out for a slow 4.45 mile loop around the neighborhood.
The loop was not bad either – I certainly didn’t try any speed work on this run either because I was probably already risking my ankle more than I should have as it was.
After the run the ankle feels not too bad, still swollen around the tendon but no worse than when I got up. I am now icing it again and will be doing a bunch more stretching and strengthening today for it as well. And then probably icing again later today.
The big test is going to be how it feels tomorrow – if it is ok then I suspect as long as I take it easy and ice and stretch properly I should be able to keep up some easier light mile runs for the next few weeks to maintain some capability at least. I can then start to ramp back in more mileage from there and hopefully do ok during the Goofy Challenge. I won’t be a speed demon but if I can go in healthy I will be happy!
Stay tuned!
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