RackOfftober

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Calf Way Round The World

It's a fine line between caution and paranoia, and I've never really worked out the tolerances of navigating that fine line inasmuch as it relates to running injuries. It's fair to say however that I'm becoming far more cautious as I age, and I like to think of that as simple and effective wisdom, but maybe, perhaps, tinged with a small side dish of not entirely misplaced paranoia as well.

So it was that I found myself today carefully circumnavigating my neighbourhood in the pre-dawn gloom, paying strict attention to the whingeing of my recalcitrant left calf. My muscles, joints and tendons frequently nag at me on these early outings, and more usually I'd simply ignore them until they give up and leave me alone. The soreness I felt in my left calf after my last plodaganza (the 15km long slow run)  did, however, turn out somewhat worse than I feared, requiring an extra day's rest. And while it felt OK this morning, after only a few minutes of cautious jogging, the dull ache with a centre point of slight, but steadily worsening stabbing pain returned. Having tried to run it off during my long run the other day, which succeeded only in making it worse, caution pushed paranoia aside and wisely, I think, I called it quits and took the calf home.

Somewhat disappointed, but relieved at least to have made a sensible decision, and glad that this is in any case, a step-back week, I used the extra time available to me to catch an earlier train to work and enjoyed a half hour walk along the harbourside, hopefully stretching out the troublesome calf muscle and precipitating a full return to some decent running distances as soon as possible.

Prior experience with these sort of injuries has shown that alcohol-based antioxidant remedies are quite effective as muscle relaxants and blood thinning agents if taken orally and which aid recovery.

So I shall get on with that, then.