No Pain, No Gain?

Peroneal Tendinopathy. That's what I'm suffering from now.

I am now 5 1/2 weeks post injury and my ankle (and area) is not fully recovered. In fact, sometimes I feel like it is as bad as the first day. (Okay, so that's not true.) Whereas before it appeared that I had a stress fracture, my PT now believes that it's just a very bad case of Peroneal Tendinopathy. All I know is that the pain pretty much moves around my ankle, and sometimes up my leg, and frustrates me beyond all else. Some days it's not that bad at all, and then the next minute, it's as if I re-injured it and I'm back to square one.

Today the PT told me that now I'm at a place in my recovery where she could say to rest the ankle, or to start and work it. All the pain I'm feeling now, is good pain. Can ya believe that?!? So.... she gave the go ahead to start and run, hmm, read jog. 2 minutes walk, 1 minute jog. Well now there is pain, and there is real pain. The walking part was fine. Even at 6 km and a 6% incline - not really a problem. As soon as I added in the 1 min jog (at 8 km) I felt the pain in my tendon so badly... OMG - this is good pain?

I managed 10 sets of 2 min walk, 1 min jog and couldn't wait to get off that darn treadmill. I soaked in a hot tub and slathered on anti-inflammatory cream. Now - it hurts, but much less than when my foot was actually striking during my jog. As much as I love running, I am NOT looking forward to tomorrows session.

When the injury first happened I was so upset and my pain was magnified by the possibility that I wouldn't be able to run for 6 weeks. Now as I've almost reached that 6 week mark, and I see that my recovery is going to be much longer than the initial assessment, I'm feeling quite dejected. It's a big statement to say that "I'm never going to run again," but that's pretty much the way I feel.

So now, I need to turn this around and look for the positives. Every day there is a tiny improvement, and I know that I should be embracing those small victories and using that progress to measure my recovery. I can't seem to do that - yet - but I do know that's the route I'm going to have to take in order to make it out of this place.

Tomorrow, when I get back on that treadmill to do my ten sets, I know it's going to hurt - and maybe my PT is right. It's a good pain that is hopefully going to pave the way to a pain free run.