The Non-Injury Injury & Exploring New Territory

The last two weeks have been somewhat eventful.  The weekend before last, I was on a normal bike ride with my friend Melissa, when while riding (and clipped in my pedals) I slightly torqued my ankle and suddenly felt a shooting pain within.  I was only able to complete 13 miles (thank goodness I got a run in beforehand) due to the pain.  Afterwards I iced it, but there really wasn't any swelling or pain to the touch.  I would just get shots of serious pain when I extended my foot from the neutral position.  I was perplexed at what it could be.  So, the next Monday I was able to go see my chiropractor (best chiropractor ever!) and she informed me I had a nerve issue inside my ankle that just got irritated due to the motion I do when clipping in and out of my pedals. Basically, I was not injured, even though I had been in great pain.  Nerve issues will do that to you I guess.  She did some work, actually twice that week, and then after a short swim and 3 mile run with very little pain, I knew I was going to be ok.  Bad part of it all, all this was happening during a very hard training week.  After looking over my training plan, I decided to swap my Recovery Week (which originally was this week) with last weeks hard week with a little tweaking.  So, as of yesterday, I'm back on track.

After basically a week off from training, I was a little worried about my long ride yesterday.  I was supposed to do a 2.5 hour bike ride and 20 min run.  This would be the longest and farthest I've ever been on my bike.  So I decided to make the best of it and do a new route and go exploring in new territory.  It turned out to be a great, but windy 40 mile bike ride.  At one point, I felt the wind actually try to pick up my front tire, so I had to stay in aero position just to keep my bike on the ground.  A little scary, but since I was crawling along at 13 mph, if I fell, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have hurt that bad!  I finished strong, with no ankle pain. I then grabbed Lola and we headed out for a 30 minute walk/run.

Today's new territory was in the pool.  This long swim workout was 6 x 500 yards.  Total of 3000 yards or 1.7 miles. That is certainly the longest swim workout I've done ever.  And it felt great.  No ankle pain. 

In other news, I've signed up for the USA 10 Miler, this upcoming Sunday.  I've done this race before, during my marathon training in 2009.  Its a fun race, which gives THE best tech race shirt ever!  The longest I've done so far in my training has been about 8 miles, and that was a few weeks ago, so this race should be interesting.  I'm not really thinking of it as a race, but just as my long run workout.  I'm sure when I wake up this Sunday on raceday I'll be thinking this: