Training for week commencing 10/04/2005

Continuing the downward spiral, this weeks training was worse than last weeks. Now you may be saying "you only managed one run last week, how could it be worse?", easy, I didn't manage any! My calf injury continued to thwart all exercise activities. There is no real pain as such, but it just does not feel "right". After a friend of mine caused a serious injury to himself after training on a slightly injured leg, I've had to fight hard to resist the urge to do exercise. I wasn't expecting to find it this hard to stop myself doing exercise, but the main thought going through my mind now is how far I'll have slipped back...

I naively thought after I'd injured it that it would just be sore for a few days then be OK. After a week had gone by and it still wasn't 100% I decided to do a bit of research. I'm glad I did. I found a web site about pulled calf muscles which was really interesting. In brief there are three severities:

• a first degree strain is damage to a few muscle fibres
• a second degree strain is damage to a more extensive number of muscle fibres
• a third degree strain is a complete rupture of the muscle itself.

It turns out that mine is a first degree sprain, which from a macho perspective is a bit disappointing! However, 3 weeks rest is recommended even for damage to a few muscle fibres! Oh well, this Thursday will be 2 weeks so I'll see how I feel.

Andy