Ankle Injury...

I'm a bit late on this report as things have been a bit disrupted this week. While I missed a few cycling sessions due to weather and logistical concerns, I did manage to squeeze out most of my planned mileage asside from my long run. The temperatures on Sunday were pretty brutal, so I elected to push the marathon pace run back to early Monday morning. When I headed out, however, the inside of my right ankle was a bit tight but it was getting better as it warmed up so I pushed through. Unfortunately, when I hit some stop lights along the way the pain came back - it would go away after about 30 seconds or so, but it persisted each time I needed to stop.

When I got past the warmup and increased my pace, it became evident that my gait was a little off so I elected to abort the run to prevent any further injury. In the end, I managed to get 7.3K in with the final 1800m at race pace. Stopping turned out to be a good move, as I was limping around for the rest of the day so it was more than a little tightness. Over the last few days, it's gotten markedly better but it's still there so I'm not ready to go back to running. I was hoping to get back on the road tomorrow, however I don't think I'll be back until at least Saturday.

I was a bit stumped as to what caused it, however. The pain is just below and behind the ankle joint on the inside of the right foot, which seem to be a common running injury and is just used for stabilizing the joint. I havn't been running on much uneven terain lately, so I'd expect to have problems in other areas first.

Either way, this morning I headed out for a swim as it allowed me to get back to work without stressing the leg too much. I took care to avoid pushing off with my right leg, which slowed me down a bit as it meant that I had to finish each length on the appropriate side. Either way, I fought through and pushed out a little over 2.3K, including a 400m set (mostly composed of 100m sets, however).

It was, however, quite evident what the cause of the injury was though once I got going. When pushing off the wall after a length, a lot of force passes through the ankle and I clearly recognised the muscle groups that were in use. The running likely agrivated the problem, however the initial injury was likely caused during one of my swimming sessions and just wasn't noticable. As such, I made sure to push off a lot lighter than normal this time around - which is likely a good idea anyway as I won't be able to do that during the race ;)


Regardless, it is clear that I won't be able to do the race this Sunday. I may be back up and running by that point, but I wouldn't want to push myself into race conditions that soon after an injury. That's not a huge problem, however, as there is another race in Guelph in two weeks, so I'll likely just reschedule my target for then. Asside from getting back into race shape, it will also give me a little more time to improve my swimming a bit more. I might head up to Orillia anyway just to watch the race and potentially pick up some pointers, although that's a bit of a long drive just to spectate ;)

As I missed writing up a review for last week, I've totalled up my mileage for the last week and inserted it in this post:

Weekly Totals:
Running: 45.0km (28.0mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.8mi)
Cycling: 84.1km (52.3mi)
Swimming: 5.6km (3.5mi)
Total: 135.9km (84.4mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 1,832.3km (1,138.5mi)
Walking: 194.6km (120.9mi)
Cycling: 2,891.4km (1,796.6mi)
Swimming: 28.8km (17.9mi)
Total: 4,947.1km (3,074.0mi)