Rob's Running Blog

Oh Damn Flying along then my Right Calf explodes on me :(

Just when it all starts coming together, my calf goes TWANG!

After the other day’s successful intervals session, and realising I wouldn’t be able to run much in the coming week due to some commitments, I decided a nice afternoon 5 miler would round off a good week of running. I didn’t set out to run it fast, or as a tempo run, but just wanted to get some miles under my belt which would take me just over 10 miles for the week – nothing over ambitious in that, really.

Set off at a slow pace and felt pretty good, first KM clicked over in 6:03 and thereafter I just seemed to start getting quicker without really trying. KM’s were ticking over nicely and though I was breathing hard I felt I could sustain it. At one point I was overtaken by a ten year old girl with her dad encouraging her on a bike, this may have been a bad omen and maybe I should have turned back then!

Kept going and with just 2.5k to go I was feeling great, running at some pace and feeling I would shatter the season’s best 5 mile time. There were some hills coming up, and I had thoughts of powering over them rather than dreading them, when suddenly my right foot landed and there was an explosion of heat and a tearing sensation in my calf. A few steps later I stopped, and had the presence of mind to stop the Garmin and realise that was it – RUN OVER. I massaged the calf but it hurt a bit to walk, and I needed to walk some distance to get to a bus stop, as I was quite a distance from my house and it was either walk about 2 miles or get the bus.

Eventually the bus came and I got home, but still quite a bit of pain in the calf, so took painkillers and put some ice on it. Checking the stats I had gone through 5k in 29:08 and had plenty left in the tank, so I seem to have finally got over the breathing and heart rate problems I had the other week, reached a point of feeling very fit and ready to go to the next level, when bang, or twang, something in my calf tears and now I have no idea how long I will be sidelined before I start the whole process of trying to get back to fitness YET AGAIN.

It feels like my body doesn’t want me to run sometimes. I guess I will have to hope this calf tear running injury is not too bad and that I can keep up the fitness I have worked hard to gain by doing some swimming.