Table of Marathons

11 MCM (not for time) 11 Wineglass (950/1442)
10 MCM (not for time) 09 MCM (348/1076)
09 Washington's Birthday Marathon (22/44) 08 MC Historic Half (51/210)
07 Frederick Marathon (32/60) 06 MCM (394/1076)
05 MCM (547/1047)

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Ruminations on an Injury, though mild.....

My principal heuristic when planning my runs is conservative: "It's not what you run today or this week that matters. It's what you run next week, next month, and next year." This view gives me an inherent tendency to manage any aches and pains early, and to focus on root causes.

This issue I have now is very minor. It amounts to a mild burning sensation in my left heel. I suspect it was brought on by trying to ramp up mileage in shoes that lack adequate support for my feet. The past few years, I have been experimenting with increasingly minimal shoes. It has worked well. I wear them as dress shoes at work and have been running predominantly in them for the past six months. I ran a not particularly high mileage fall season in them, then backed off for the winter.

Late this winter I started my annual mileage ramp upwards. I have to presume that my lower legs and feet could not support the stress of running in neutral lightweight Altra Escalantes and and spending my entire days in what amounted to bare foot shoes. I had also really slacked off on my heel raises, which are fundamental a very strong foundation for the entire leg.

I promised myself one to two weeks of complete rest from running. As the admittedly mild pain attenuates, my mind turns to miles. It negotiates with me: "How about one mile? That can't hurt anything." Compounding the attraction back to the road is knowing that my left foot easily sustained the 15 sets of weighted heel raises that I did this week.

What is running? There is nothing in the universe save the universe. Humans can only perceive the universe by its change, its cycles. Running brings us in direct, unavoidable contact with that universe. We must bend our minds and bodies, softened by disuse, misuse, and unnatural comforts, back to the activity and awareness of our evolutionary origins. By doing so, we cleanse ourselves of the mental and physical poisons of a materialistic, consumerist civilization. We experience, live, and adapt to the cycles that seemingly endlessly repeat all around us. Without that return to the universe, to nature, we remained trapped in the artificial world we have build around us.

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