Sunday, June 10, 2012

Saying Goodbye to Marathon #3

Here we are. It's race day in Tofino and Ucluelet and instead of running Edge to Edge I am sitting in front of my computer in Vancouver. 

I made the executive decision last weekend to not run. My recovery's been going well, but I wasn't feeling strong enough and didn't want to risk re-injury after making so much progress.

But here's the thing. This is probably a little strange, but in the past few weeks I've found myself alternating between the five stages of griefdenial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Is that weird? It's an injury, not a death in the family ... right? But often I'd wonder what I did differently (why now? What did I do wrong?) and then feel outraged that my Five by 35 schedule had been disrupted without any explanation. Or I'd get off the treadmill in my apartment building and be on the verge of tears, so upset that my leg still didn't feel right. 

I think part of the reason why I haven't blogged in the last week or so is because my emotions have just been all over the place. Quite honestly, I've felt a bit mental about it all. Is this normal? Part of me thinks that it is really strange to be having such a strong reaction to an overuse injury.

Then again, this was my first marathon after being off running for so long. I'd made such a big stink about it, starting a new blog and telling everyone about my running goals. And then, as you know, I'm a huge believer that good things come with bad; training was going extremely well and after I'd PB'd at the BMO Half Marathon maybe I should've seen this coming.

As for right now, in this very instant, I am okay. Even though I woke up thinking about the marathon I was not running today, and the finish line I would not cross, I also decided to go outside for a slow 6 km; I'm walking every four minutes but things are improving. 

So I guess this is acceptance - for now, anyway. And as best as it can be on a race day that I am not running.

Working my way back. Today's 6 km: almost feeling normal but not quite there.

No comments:

Post a Comment