Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The post about letting go of my marathon dream...for now

This was me yesterday.  Bringing Julien to school for the first day of
grade 1. Going back to work in my fall clothes...

It's incredible how in the space of heart beat everything can change.  I got up early this morning for my run (8K on the schedule).  I made it out my door and down to the end of my street.  There was an elderly lady walking her dog (at 6am), I swerved on the side walk to avoid them, went onto an uneven piece of pavement, and went over on my ankle.  I fell pretty hard and managed to slam the left side of my face against the pavement.  I hobbled home and immediately started icing my ankle and my face.  I knew that my ankle was more than sprained.  I've sprained that ankle numerous times in the past and it's never swelled up quite like this.

I waited until 9am, had my hubby drive me to urgent care, got an x-ray and was informed that yes, I fractured it.  I'm currently sporting a fiberglass splint.  I have to make an appointment for the fracture clinic next week where I will be given another x-ray and assessed by the orthopedic surgeon.  I am in shock.  I cannot believe that I am destined to be lying around for the next month or more.  It's my right ankle and I'm in a non-weight bearing splint.  I can't drive.  All I can do is physio exercises.  So that is what I'll do.

It sucks that I'm going to lose so much running, but this isn't the worst thing that could happen. There will always be other marathons.  I will heal.  I'll have to start at the basics with running again, but I'll progress quickly.  One thing that made me feel good is that the triage nurse asked if I was an athlete.  My resting heart rate is 49.  Because I'm in good shape, I'm confident that when I am able to run again, I'll be able to start training for the Chilly half marathon and the Around the Bay 30K at the end of November.

I refuse to let my muscles turn to mush though.  That is why I'll do my glute, quad, core exercises every single day.  I'm also going to focus on dropping a few pounds.  I'm going to be more strict about my food consumption.  Since I can't train right now, I'm cutting out nuts and fruit from my diet until I can run again.  I want to get leaner and found it hard to drop weight while I was training. Now's my chance.  Instead of making this the worst thing thing that could happen to me, I'm going to try and embrace it as much as I can.   I have my health, my family is healthy and life will go on.

In the top center pick, you can see how swollen my face on the right is.