Thursday, September 6, 2007

Getting hurt was the best thing for me

I was running almost exclusively until I came up lame with a plantar injury. When that happened I needed to find another way to exercise while I healed, as it turned out I didn't heal completely. I turned to swimming, weight lifting and at home martial arts/ body weight exercises. I returned to running recently to excellent gains in strength and endurance. At the same time I have continued doing my nightly ritual of push ups, crunches, leg raises, calf raises, squats, lunges, tricep dips, and punches and kicks ad nausea. The benefits have been excellent, not just in terms of what I can accomplish now compared to when I started but how I feel. My muscular strength has really rebounded and I can see the reduced fat deposits on my arms legs and abdomen. It's great and I am really pleased. I have an injury to really thank for it, because if I hadn't hurt myself I don't think I would have pushed myself to do these nightly exercises when most normal people are resting for the next day.

My heel has been feeling better and maybe in a couple of months I will be back to normal. Tonight I hit the streets for another run, I hope to put in 6 to 8. Which really means I intend to do 8 and will do everything in my power to do 8 but I will settle for 6 if time constraints intervene.

10 days until the race. Yikes!!! (I use exclamation points very conservatively)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good for you Rob to keep on keepin' on! You must be excited to break out the exclamation marks - and you should be. You are going to do great!

Anonymous said...

You've got a great outlook to find the silver lining here. And you're not just making it up but actually finding improvement in other ways.

Feel like you're getting some relief with the PF. Been there and have some thoughts if you're exploring additional ways of treating it.

So excited for your race!