Sunday, August 30, 2009

Tendinitis


My Sunday run was a disaster. I met some guys at Difficult Run hoping I'd shaken my tendinitis. I tested the leg last night with a shuffle jog across the road and all seemed fine. I had no pain whatsoever. However, before turning in, I put my fingers to my lower leg and could feel the tendon creak when I moved my foot up and down. I shrugged my shoulders and went to sleep. The run started out fine but the more I negotiated the slick, wet muck on the trails the more my leg began to ache. I turned around after 34 minutes and hobbled my way back to the parking lot furious I hadn't rested for one more day. To make matters worse, I developed a slight sore throat when I got home. While resting up on the couch I watched the classic Western Shane for the umpteenth time on TV. Woody Allen called Shane the best American movie of all time. It's a damn good film and contains one of the greatest fight scenes in movie history...which I posted below. The set-up: Shane is new to town and already had a run-in with the antagonist after buying a soda pop (instead of whiskey) at the bar (the soda was for the kid who also appears in the clip). The antagonist throws a shot of whiskey on Shane and was then told to "never to come into the saloon again". Shane doesn't fight back. Later, Shane does return (of course) to return the soda bottle and get a deposit. And this is where we start...

3 comments:

Chris Vames Sloane said...

Jake, I have had that type of tendonitis before. It's anterior tibialis tendonitis which is the tendon in front of your shinbone. I'm sure you're icing it like hell but after the pain subsides you should do some (light)strengthening for that area(such as ABC's with your foot). I found that helped me return to running more quickly because the strengthening enables the tendon to be resilient to the pounding so it won't develop more micro tears which lead to tendonitis. It can be tricky though because you don't want to overdo the strengthening and hurt the area more. So start out lightly. Cross training is good too(as long as it doesn't aggravate the area) because the blood flow increases HEALING speed for tendons(which take a longer time to heal).

dirkdeheer said...

jake, try to be patient, you have the base and with a few days rest, you'll be fine! More water training won't hurt! In my sophomore year, I had a similar injury, which kept me from running for 3 out of the final 4 days before a meet. The day before I was able to shuffle 10 minutes and ran a PB 1500!

KLIM said...

Thanks Chris. I've been massaging it gently per your advice. It seems to hut when I wake up (from not being on it all day) and when I get up and walk around after sitting on it too long. I just made some new ice cups.

Dirk - you are right. Patience is key.