Goldilocks

 I hate being injured. I imagine I’m no different to any active person on that front. It makes training difficult, it’s frustrating not being able to do the things you enjoy. 

I’ve had Plantar fasciitis in my left foot for around 4 months now. I’m not sure where it started: increased training mileage, unforgiving work boots, or perhaps just one of those things… 

Having one leg longer than the other and hypermobile joints means that my body is subject to some pretty uneven forces, and being heavy makes it work even harder. So injury happens… it’s part of life. 

So, injured? Rest up, right? That used to be the advice. 

But more recently… 

In my ‘paddling for work’ days whilst nursing a shoulder injury I remember a physio teaching me that tendons & ligaments have a poor blood supply, and as a result they need to be worked to recover & repair; they need stimulus to feed blood to them to allow them to rebuild.  But the trick is, just how much. 

So this time, I’ve been goldilocksing my foot injury: not too much, but just enough. 

Just enough taping, just enough icing, just enough physio exercises, and just enough running, biking, swimming & lifting. 

For the last 4 months I’ve felt like I’ve been robbed of the spring in my step. My walk has been with a limp, my run has lacked any bounce. 

But today, for the first time since the autumn, I ran normally. After a few kilometres it became harder but for the first few, it felt like I was running on air. I’d so missed the feeling of spring, of fluid movement- and it was back. I’m not a fast runner, or a springy one, by anyone’s standards, but that doesn’t matter: it’s the feeling of joy that is important. And today, for the first time in months, it was back. I’ll have to keep working on my foot, it’s not completely fixed. But the feeling of joy was back. 

I think Goldilocks is a good philosophy for training of all sorts: for staying injury free, for improving, for recovery. 

Not too little, not too much… Just enough.