Coming to terms

As frustrating as it is....I was doing some research last night on my pain and I feel I've come to the conclusion that I have a stress fracture on my right fibula. I've also decided that I'm gonna try to get in and get it checked out on Monday. Really the only bad part about all of this is that every source was consistent in saying that these things take 4-6 weeks to fully heal, and RICE is really the only way to go. One source also did a study on various stress fractures of the lower leg, and found that 7% of people with stress fractures of the fibula recover in 2-4 weeks, 75% recover in 4-8 weeks, and the rest take longer....so I'm really really hoping I can be part of the statistical 7%. Everything made sense, too, as I was looking at the causes of the stress fracture. For one, excessive pronation of the ankle upon foot impact leads to it, and I tend to do that. It leads to the injury because the peroneus longus muscle that runs along the lateral side of the leg is working harder to keep everything stable. Number two, the big one, it is often caused by an abrupt change in weekly mileage. BINGO! Check this out: My weekly mileage counts for 2006 were 13, 15.5, 19.5, 19.5, 17, 17, 19.5, 21, 21.5, 23, 18, 21.5....and then the week of March 27 - April 2, I did 31 miles. I broke a cardinal rule of running by increasing mileage way more than 10% of my previous week. I noticed it right then, too, when I was adding my miles for the week and all I could do was hope that nothing would happen. Sure enough...I have written down on April 5 that my calf area was tight. It went away in the next week but came back in the beginning of May, and I wrote so much about all of that in my first posts as a blogger.

So here I am. Week 1, day 6 without running. I've been icing it and everything like a madman and it actually feels better than it did last weekend. I've been trying to stay off of it as much as possible too. Today I just HAD to do something though, so I hopped on the elliptical at the rec center and did 4 miles. Watching Germany/Costa Rica in the World Cup took my mind off of everything, so that was a welcome surprise. Then when I came back home, my roomate said he and couple friends were going to the lake near here, so I went with them because I've been in a rut lately and needed to go have some fun. We played frisbee and I didn't make much effort to catch most of them, but I noticed that I had some pain when I tried to even jog a couple steps. I was barefoot on grass too, so I don't know how much difference that makes either.

I also bought some pre-wrap and training tape too because I figure that's a good way of providing compression. I took a couple classes on athletic training during my freshman year so I know a little bit about taping. So last night was my first night of trying it out, I wore it while I was sleeping and it actually felt good in the morning, so I'm gonna try it again tonight and see what happens.

Tonight I saw the Da Vinci Code movie with a couple of roomates, even though I think I'm the only one in this world who hasn't read the book yet. I know it has gotten a lot of bad reviews, but I actually liked it. It was a bit hard to follow, but I like movies that make you think. It was interesting with the kind of logic they used...like how they got to certain conclusions and stuff like that. Then after the movie, my roomates were talking about how it sucked because it was so different from the book. Guess I wouldn't know!

And on a final random note...I'm sure some of you use frozen peas when you're icing something that hurts. Do you guys end up actually cooking and eating the peas? There just seems to be something weird about it...