Tag: tendinopathy

2019 week five

Book Read
5. Motherhood – Sheila Heti

Kilometres Ran
week five – 40.0

2019 To Date: 198 KM

I suppose it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that I did not really enjoy reading a couple hundred pages about someone trying to decide whether on not to have a child but while I am no fan of children (in spite of the fact that people seem really excited to point out that I once was one as if that is the best argument that they can come up with) I am a fan of Sheila Heti, going back to her telephone conversation with Thea Bowering that appeared in The Capilano Review Issue 3:22 along with a really great short story called The Girl Who Planted Flowers. There were times reading Motherhood that I enjoyed and other times that I did not and quite a few times when I wondered if I’d misplaced the bookmark because damned if I hadn’t already read this once before. I’m glad that I read it and I’m not surprised that it was shortlisted for the 2018 Giller Prize but I’m forced to wonder if I give this book a pass because I’m a Heti fan. It is probably true that I would not have picked it up if it was written by another author.

Lunchtime at the office.

When I met with my physiotherapist last she said that if stuff was going okay that I am allowed to start increasing distance so I’ve made the dramatic increase from 5 KM last Sunday up to 6.6 KM today. My achilles feels okay but not great but not painful just the comes-and-goes sensation of imagine your achilles feels like dragging a string of wool across sandpaper. Not painful, but rather uncomfortable or annoying. I’ve taken the instruction to run less far, more frequently, and now have a 5-ish kilometres per day streak of 16 days and I next visit my physiotherapist on Friday when I will find out if I’m allowed to run the First Half on Sunday, February 10. I am not confident permission will be granted. But I am really curious to see what will happen if I am allowed to race given that my farthest run of the past three weeks is 8 KM some 18 days ago and it’s been over three weeks since I last ran more than 11 KM. My biggest issue weighing heavily on my mind is that in it now 13 weeks until the BMO Marathon and running less than a marathon per week is definitely not going to get me across the finish line anywhere near my goal time. And as much as I like the Half course I really do not want to have to downgrade to the 21.1 again this year.

2019 week two

Book Read
2. Sodom Road Exit – Amber Dawn

Kilometres Ran
week two – 26.1

To Date – 106 KM

Named one the Globe and Mail 100 favourite books of 2018 (I’ll take their word for it; the article is behind the G&M paywall), Sodom Road Exit tells the story of Starla returning to her home town and is haunted by her past and also haunted by the town’s past. I picked up a copy last summer and it sat in my to-read pile and then towards the end of the year we went to the Real Vancouver Writer’s Series event and Dawn read the opening few pages and I was hooked though there’s nothing about ghosts in the first few pages so imagine my surprise when the novel took a turn towards parapsychology. Should I have known? Who cares? Starla is no ordinary character, which you learn quite quickly as she breaks just about every horror story rule and survives. I really liked this book.

The Nation Run 2019
The Nation Run 2019. Photo via Vancouver Running Co. Instagram.

Last week I wrote about not getting injured in 2019 and then I woke up Monday morning and went to the office and my achilles was ah-killing me and then in the afternoon with it still aching I pulled off my sock to apply some Voltaren and my ankle was a ballon so I called my physiotherapist. I don’t make resolutions but if I did my resolution to not see my physiotherapist in 2019 lasted seven days. Turns out I have developed tendinopathy in my achilles and I have no idea how or why but I took the rest of the week off and then went out Saturday for the third-annual The Nation Run hosted by Vancouver Running Co.

I figured that I’d see how things felt and decide on-the-run whether to do the 10 or 15 KM options and at 9 everything felt fine and then at about 11.5 I thought to myself, “Ah crap that was dumb.” The event was pretty great with a great weather and a big, friendly crowd. But now I’m spending Sunday evening alternating an icepack and hot-pack on my achilles and wondering about the Icebreaker 8K I’m registered to race in seven days.