Learning As I Go...

Last year, it was achilles tendinitis that prevented my participation in the 70.3 triathlon I was planning to do...

So I'm sitting here today with an ice pack on my achilles tendon (AT). Last night, during my trail run, I was on a long hill and my right AT began to feel tight, so I adjusted and tried to land as flat footed as possible up the hill and began heel striking for the rest of my run.

In my ambition to train without shin splints, I resolved to try to train almost exclusively on the trails for this first month or so. But I now realize that running on the trail requires an entirely different foot strike--forefoot striking--than what my feet, tendons, lower legs are used to--heel striking. This put too much stress on my AT too fast and caused the resultant strain. (Running barefoot the other night probably didn't help matters). I can only hope I noticed early enough that it's not a big deal. So, two things I've learned.

Wisdom: Training on trails will help build up the muscles/tendons, etc., that I will be using most on the CDR.

Caution: At this point, running exclusively on trails will likely give me tendinitis!

So I've decided to rest a couple days (back to the God-forsaken elliptical), and when I return I'll be back on the road, at least part of the time.

***One cool thing that came out of it: Last night I had the guys in my Youth Group pray over me; and, in fact, I had no pain in this morning when I woke up. I'm still going to proceed with caution, but I'm thankful to God for his heeling power, not to mention the gift of legs and feet!!!

~Jeremy