A Lesson in Patience

One of the things a runner must learn is sometimes one of the hardest.  Patience.

We must have patience to accumulate the miles of training needed to get to our goals.  We cannot just go out and get a PR in a race with out first having put in the sweat, tears, and miles.  We must then have the patience to let out bodies recover properly before resuming training for the rest race.  I usually from the months of March to September always have yet another race to look forward to.  This year I was side lined from the end of March until September and then again for the whole month of October until mid November, dealing first with a major quad strain and then a foot injury.

I fully believe now looking back that had I rested better in the week following Peaks to Prairie in which I had run a grueling 9 plus miles down hill at a PR pace I would have been back at it much sooner.   I lacked the patience to give my body the break it needed.

I hate downtime.  I want to get out and run.  So I did despite all the DOMS in my quads I kept a pretty normal schedule with a cutback in intensity but not necessarily mileage.  Then once it was apparent I was clearly injured I kept trying to push my body back into it before it was ready.  So instead of 6 weeks of rest, I had nearly 5 months of crappy running.

When I hurt my foot in October I was so bummed but it hurt bad enough that I did nearly nothing the first week and then after that for another 3 weeks I only did things that didn't irritate it at all. When I did start running again I kept my Garmin off and my pace easy and my miles way down. 

Happily I can report today that my patience is paying off! My foot is feeling so much better and my right quad no longer has a niggle in it either.   I also for the first time since April was able to confidently add jump lunges, jump squats and mountain climbers back into my HIIT workouts without having to go easy on them.  YAY! 

and I am adding them back in slowly only doing 10 jump lunges at a time instead of the 40 I used to normally do.  Even though I would really like to be back to 40 I am going to ease into it carefully with patience.  What this last 6 or so months has really taught me is that in the long run the patience will pay off if I just give my body the time it needs to heal and get back into it.

and finally if you are wanting a new pair of compression socks your odds of winning a pair are huge if you enter my virtual run!

At this point I hope I have learned the value of being patient in post race recovery and recovering from injuries.  Being sidelined for a week or 4 is way way better than having sub par running and getting more injuries.  if only I didn't love running so much it would be easier to be patient!

How have injuries affected your patience?