Achilles injury (Read 535 times)

I had Achilles tendonitis in 2002. It happened a week before my goal marathon. I was dancing at a wedding in dress shoes all night long Saturday night and then went out for a medium-hard 12 mile run in a cold rain the next morning and *pop* something went awry. Mine was a little lower than yours it sounds like, closer to the heel. Well I iced it and took lots of vitamin I and tried to stay off it as much as possible that week. Around Wednesday I went out for an easy run...it hurt. I decided I didn't know when I'd be in that kind of shape again and I needed to give the marathon a try anyway. My Achilles was okay at first, just sort of a dull throb. Then it got worse and worse as the race went on. Duh! Around mile 13 as I was coming down a bridge I picked up a little extra speed and I felt a distinct twinge. I thought of the images of guys snapping their Achilles in football games and falling down like they'd been shot. So I slowed it down and just tried to run gingerly. Somewhere just past mile 20 I decided that I could no longer protect it. I went for broke. I wound up finishing the race but a few steps past the finish line, when the adrenaline wore off, I could no longer walk. I have a great photo of the finish in which you can really see how much pain I'm in. A lot more than "normal" end of marathon pain, I can tell you. It was a few days before I could walk on it without help. For a few weeks I did no running--I actually joined the Y and did some weights with my scrawny ass runners frame. It was probably 6 or 8 weeks with a lot of ice, rest and ibuprofen before I could really run normally without any pain. At first I would get phantom pains but eventually those went away too. But, hey, I'm glad I ran the race. I ran a PR. One that, unfortunately, still stands today. I've had a lot of aches and pains but that was really my only real running injury of my adult life.

Last fall I strained my left calf (which means that I tore the muscle slightly) while running, and it took me about 4 weeks to return to running regularly. I found, though, that it was the impact (particularly downhill running) that aggravated the injury--the elliptical trainer didn't bother it (much), nor did the exercise bike. I'm not sure if this is what happened to you, but you should be careful about returning too soon from this sort of injury. If you have micro-tears in your muscle now, running on it too soon will make those tears grow. Good luck!

If you look at my log for July 2006 you'll see that I had a similar injury. Without breaking my marathon training schedule, I gave myself 2 3/4 days between runs by running very early in the morning on Sunday and not again until the evening run on Tuesday night. Although it was technically only one (planned) rest day -- its was the equivalent of almost three days off. The pain was gone, and didn't return. These days, I am much more careful about stretching my achilles before every run, just to be safe.