Lessons learned from a habitual outdoor runner

Month: June 2019 Page 1 of 2

Know how or go now?

It is not a lack of Know How that holds me back, it’s a lack of Go Now! -Jerry Schotz

We have to be intentional about our health, yet just knowing what is needed is not real valuable if we cannot get ourselves to do anything about it. This holds true for many aspects of life including career development and our impact on the world around us. Take action!

Learn from others

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Working out after an injury

I’m a big proponent of keeping moving after an injury. If you read yesterdays post about losing some skin, I am of course still hurting the next day. I have seen some amazing healing from using this method and the quantity of body issues I’ve had to work through are diverse.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to our bodies! We need to, but we also need to push ourselves as we will almost always take the path of least pain, as it is a built-in feature. I follow a sports injury physiotherapist online and she recently did a video about this topic and I must say my own experiences align with her thoughts. Give it a listen if your interested.

I start out slow to see what my body is going to do and tell me. Does this pain become just an annoyance? Does it hurt so bad I can’t stand it? Or can I compensate by slowing down or leaning on a different muscle or technique?

I will also preface this by saying that you should get some rest, think about your nutrition, take it easier than normal to give your body some time to recover. Eat right, drink lots of healthy fluids, apply heat or cold to the areas as applicable. Let others help and care for you!

With my knee aching and skinned, my elbow/forearm skinned but starting to scab over, and my left side still jabbing me, I managed to get an 8.6 mile run in at a pace that was even better than expected (9.15 min/mi).

Skin in the game?

4 miles in with 4+ miles to go, a puppy comes out of the ditch and starts running beside me. The closest house is about a mile up the road so I feel bad for this pup who seems real happy to see a human. Unfortunately puppies tend to be excited and not think. Instead of staying alongside me it decides to bolt in front of me… yeah… down I go as I’m running a decent clip when the pup took a hard left in front of me.

When you find yourself laying on the asphalt looking at the sky, you begin to evaluate how hurt you might be from what just happened. I could feel the burning skin and pain in my knee. Nothing felt broken or sprained and I was able to get back on my feet to continue the run. Yes, it hurt. I knew my body was going to be in healing mode for a while and there was blood coming from my wounds so I drank several ounces of water to give it a boost.

After the first quarter-mile I was back to decent pace and headed toward home. It was a memorable run home. For a moment I had considered calling for a ride, but I was mobile again and making decent progress in spite of the injuries. I took the photos when I got in the house to evaluate the damages.

Now about the pup. I’m concerned he was dumped out in the country so I’m going to head out there in the car to see if I can find it and make a report to the County Animal Control team. He seemed fine enough after I fell over him. When I got back up he was running the other direction. Poor thing probably thought I kicked him or was being a mean human.

Today, I actually left some skin in the “game”, but will live to run another day!

Onward!

May 2019 Running Stats

May 2019 had a few more trips to Indiana than usual. The Indiana routes I take have a lot more hills than our part of Illinois.

May 2019 Running Totals

The Illinois routes are also much straighter than Indiana as you can see in the examples below.

It was a good month overall, no injuries and the weather has cooperated most mornings. The temperature has been all over the place, but reasonable to adjust to as well. There have been some wet mornings, but it can be a lot worse!

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