Please pass the ice.

          Injuries: they suck.  Whether mild or severe, they present a setback to your fitness goals and force you to wallow in self-pity on your sofa and eat an entire bag of salt & pepper kettle chips. 

            Right now, I’m nursing three injuries: right shoulder & arm pain, right foot pain from capsulitis (click it- I did the Google-ing for you), and left foot pain from a strain or sprain on the inside of my arch.  Oh, there’s the constant bunion pain too, but I’m willing to ignore that most of the time (by the way, I’m 33 years old, though you may have guessed 83).

            I swear, I really do try to do all my workouts with good form and execution, but I seem to be injury prone.  A lot of it is genetic, turns out… Dr. Brewer, my podiatrist, has referred to me having “bad feet” more than once (my mother had many foot issues as well).  Also, I’m hypermobile (very flexible), which my physical therapist and chiropractor both say can lead to injuries.  Overtraining and clumsiness have caused other injuries.

            This stupid left foot injury is super frustrating.  I nursed the right foot back to health after the capsulitis flare-up this summer, sticking to non-impact workouts.  I’d had a baby in June, and even though I was eager to start running again, I held off until December.  Then, in January, I increased mileage way too fast (especially for someone who had basically taken over a year off of distance running!).  In one week, I did an 8-mile run on a Friday, 5 miles Saturday, 5 miles Sunday, 6 miles Tuesday, and two Body Attack classes and a Body Pump class Thursday.  By Thursday night, my foot was in excruciating pain.  Dr. Brewer said was a strain or sprain, and it still hasn’t healed (it’s been 5 weeks now).  It will start to feel better, and then I’ll try light jogging (who am I kidding…I am so slow, all my running falls under the light jogging category, injured or not!), and it’ll be really painful again.  I am so bummed because I’m probably not going to be able to do the Borgess half marathon like I had planned.

            This injury is honestly as challenging mentally and emotionally as it is physically.  If you read my goals from the last blog post, you’ll notice none of them is about aerobic exercise; that’s because I have no idea when I’ll be back to my “normal” routine.  I am so sick of the elliptical machine that I want to punch it in the face…wherever that is.  I have been constantly ticked off when I'm at the gym because I am not able to do the activities that I wanted to do. 

Then, a few days ago, I saw this quote on a church marquis somewhere in town:  “Obstacles are just the things you see when you lose sight of your goals.”   If my goal is to improve my fitness level, then I’ll have to find a way to do it, even if my stupid foot keeps being so stupidly stupid.

            So, the elliptical machine and I still spend a lot of quality time together, and I’m trying to do some interval training on there to make it interesting (and the elliptical machine keeps trying to win my affection by telling me I've burned way more calories than I actually have).  As for my foot, I ice it as often as possible, take Motrin after working out, and wear my size-12-super-stabilizing-orthotics-inside-prescribed-by-my-podiatrist Brooks Ariel shoes all the time.  All. The. Time (minus sleeping & showering).  Yup, I’m the cool teacher at school who wears dress pants and gym shoes.  And yes, you read that right, size 12…my feet grew with every pregnancy.  I’m really only (only!) an 11, but in running shoes, I wear a size 12.  Sigh.  (My awesome, supportive husband, who is reading this over my shoulder, just remarked, “You have the same size feet as, like, a six foot tall man.”  He’d better watch out…his face is easier to find than the elliptical machine’s.)

There are a couple of silver linings on these injury clouds.  First, the summer injury forced me into Pump class (I’m usually a cardio junkie), and I’m loving it.  I like the physical changes I’ve seen from that class, and I feel like I’m building up mental strength as well.  Second, salt & pepper kettle chips are really good.   

Dress + gym shoes = legendary.