... jog. For 3 whole minutes at a time.
GAAAAAAAHHH!!! Can it get much more frustrating and pedestrian than this???
I've been recovering from an injury, a strain in my right calf, for the last two months. The first month, I did nothing but walk a few times a week. Last month, I started jogging again, but no more than 2 minutes at a time with some walking rest, and no more than about 15 minutes jogging total in a workout. Now I'm clear up to 3 minutes at a time and about 20 minutes total.
And after 2 such workouts this week, I'm actually feeling sore. I'm rather put out by the whole thing, and I blame my shoes. Yup, definitely the shoes' fault.
For my entire running career to date, shoes have been my arch-nemesis. I have a rather unique physiological combination of "low-volume" feet and "flat" feet, and both have been a significant frustration over the years.
"Low-volume" is a polite way of saying "skinny." They're not so narrow side-to-side, though, which is the dimension in which variable-width shoes are sized. "Low-volume" means my feet are narrow top-to-bottom, which means that even "narrow" shoes often just don't fit. Over the years I have gone through all sorts of methods to jury-rig shoes to get get them to stay on my feet, including wearing thick socks and stuffing extra insoles in to take up the extra room. And even with all that, I still generally have to crank down the laces as far as they will go.
Now, that's all well and good, excepting that I also have flat feet, meaning my arch is naturally low and my feet naturally pronate (i.e., the foot/ankle rolls to the inside) more than the average bear when I take a step. In and of itself, that's no big deal. However, when you take a foot that moves laterally during the footstrike (as ALL feet do, to some extent: it's part of the body's natural shock-absorption system) and stuff an inch or more of squishy material under it (in my case, even adding extra squishy material to make the shoe fit), that lateral motion is amplified. This leads to all sorts of common running maladies, especially the condition known as shin splints. To combat this, manufacturers have developed "motion control" shoes, which use various densities of midsole (the squishy stuff) to somewhat reduce the rolling of the foot. Problem solved... right?
Next issue: motion control shoes tend to be envisioned for runners that weigh about 250lbs. They have names like "The Beast" and "Stabil." They're big, beefy, heavy... and WIDE.
It's a vicious cycle.
 |
| Minimalist-Boot to the Head! |
It's taken me about 10 years to finally find the solution to my dilemma, or at least the next step in getting there: minimalist shoes! My personally favorites are Vibram Five Fingers, and they're the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned! They're still a bit too "wide" to be a perfect fit, but I've thoroughly enjoyed them so far...
... and they've ALSO been a source a great frustration. This bleedin' injury was caused by shoes that were meant to eliminate all those nagging running injuries. Out of the pot and into the fire.
OK, so that's not completely fair. In all honesty, the injury wasn't caused by the shoes. It was caused by me taking my training too far, too fast, when my body wasn't ready to go there yet. Because I've spent most of my 34 years mucking around in "regular" shoes, my Vibrams stress my feet, calves, and ankles in ways they're not used to being stressed. It takes some time and effort to strengthen all those muscles and ligaments that haven't really been used for all those years. I caught a blurb from another Vibram user saying you can expect it to take a full year to properly adapt to the shoes.
So I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that I got injured when I was doing "normal" runs (30+ min. with some strides, at 8:30 "easy" pace) after only about 6 months. Aerobically, I was having a blast and starting to think about adding in a couple weekly interval workouts, starting to get into race shape. But after each workout, my calves were... more sore than I'd expect. Definitely more sore than I'd like to admit. That sort of thing is a signal to not increase training, or even to decrease it. I wanted to go forward, though... so I kept it up. Sure enough... POP! No more runny-runny for Brian.
This is where the patience part comes in. The weather has been GLORIOUS. Aerobically, I'm still in pretty decent shape, and I have this horrendous urge to get out and move. These little walk-jog workouts barely cause me to sweat, much less breathe hard. It's very frustrating, to say the least.
I've heard it said that you should never pray for patience. God has a way of giving usu situations and opportunities to build patience (or whatever virtue you're lacking at the time), instead of just infusing us with the quality. We, in general, seem to think this isn't fair, 'cause the process is rarely fun, and usually rather unpleasant. We have to keep in mind, though, that God isn't so concerned with our pleasure, but the character that we're developing through the course of our lives. The trick is finding the pleasure - the joy - within the process.
My one saving grace is this: I keep telling myself that this will be better for me in the long run. If I go through the pedantic process of properly strengthening my feet and legs, I shouldn't have this sort of trouble again. It'll benefit everything I do. I just have to have the patience to get through it all...
<walk... jog... walk... jog... walk...>
... 'cause the hills, and the track, and the races, they do be callin' to me...
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