This morning's run was a bit of an improvement. My ankle is still a little sketchy, but it's better than it was Sunday and Monday. My pace was better, but still not great. I had my regular physio appointment today. Graham took one look at my ankle and confirmed that it was quite swollen. My right ankle is the ankle that I have had trouble with my entire life. I sprained it FOUR times. Once in primary school, once in middle school, once in high school and once as an adult when I was in my 20's. And my sprains were bad. I was rolling over on it as a morbidly obese person.
Needless to say, my right ankle is pretty week. So now on top of working on strengthening my hamstrings, glutes and lower back, I have to start working on strengthening my ankle. So Graham gave me more new exercises to do. I tried them out at physio and discovered that I have horrible balance. I already knew I had pretty poor balance, but it's a miracle I can stand upright. Although it looks fairly easy in the pictures, I assure you it was the hardest thing I have had to do in physio to date!
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| Finding my balance... |
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| Success! For ten seconds... |
So the good news is that my condition is fixable. The other good news is that I don't have to stop running to treat it. The bad news is that I have to deal with it in the first place. It's frustrating because as soon as something gets fixed, something else goes wrong. Thank goodness I have unlimited physio benefits through my work.
I am officially back into weight-loss mode. I'm eating lean protein and vegetables. Pretty boring but I know it will get me the results I want. I need to drop my upper thighs, hips and ass to become a faster runner. Well that and do speed work of course. Losing the extra weight I'm carrying certainly won't hurt my running performance. I weighed in at 165.5 pounds on Monday morning. I'll weigh myself again on July 7th to see where I stand. I don't like to do frequent weigh-ins because when I was losing weight while following Dr. Poon's Metabolic Diet, I became obsessed with the scale. It wasn't a fun place to be because my weight could fluctuate several pounds in a day and I was constantly weighing myself. I've come a long way in that department because I can go weeks without weighing myself.
I wouldn't recommend going weeks without weighing yourself, unless you follow a very regimented eating plan. I didn't cheat when I went from 290 to 165, and one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say that anyone who says they didn't cheat while dieting is a liar. I don't lie. And I didn't cheat. Believe me or not, but I'm so addicted to sugar and carbs that if I did cheat, I would have derailed myself completely. I cannot have just one! I never gained weight during the 14 months it took me to lose 125 pounds. I did gain weight when I tried to lose 10 pounds in April. Although I gained 3 pounds, I dropped a clothing size. I lost those three pounds when I switched over to Paleo. And I still didn't cheat!
I know that these last 15 pounds are not going to come off easily. I need to be patient. And I need to keep my eye on the prize. Eventually I will run the Boston Marathon. That is my ultimate running goal (right now) and it's a lot of work to get there. It won't happen this year, but maybe I'll be strong enough next year. If not, my qualifying time changes (10 more minutes) once I hit 45. Maybe 2015 is my year. If that doesn't pan out, it goes up another 1.5 hours when I hit 80. Boston in 2050 or bust baby!
