So I’ve been most nervous about the swim of the Lake George Triathlon (I’ll be doing it in THREE DAYS, eek), but yesterday I had a scare that made me question the run as well. (And that is NO GOOD—running is my thing, and I was supposed to make up for my super-slow swim on that leg!)
I went out for a jog yesterday morning, and my Achilles felt about the same as it did during the Color Run: It felt tight at first but then loosened up. But then I got to 3 miles and decided to do 1 more, and literally one block later—BAM! I felt a pop in my Achilles that shot up my calf. My first thought was, “Oh crap I just ruptured my Achilles, holy eff.” My second thought was, “There’s no way I ruptured my Achilles, I wouldn’t be able to stand.”
I stretched it and rubbed it a little and tried to run around the block a few times. It didn’t feel AWFUL, but it didn’t feel good. Wah. I started wondering if I’d be able to run at all for the tri and resigned myself to think that worst-case scenario, I’d do the swim and bike and then drop out. (Because, quite frankly, as depressing as it’d be to end my first triathlon with a DNF, the idea of WALKING the entire 6.2 miles sounds even worse to me. I mean if I did that, and people yelled anything like, “C’mon, run, you can do it!” to me, I know I’d respond with, “No I CAN’T, SHUT UP!”)
My friend Alex, who’s had Achilles issues before, then freaked me OUT with a tale of his friend who ran through Achilles soreness and then had to get several surgeries and not run for three years. He said, “Do NOT RUN before you see a doctor.” Um, yeah. So I booked a doctor’s appointment STAT.
My ankle really felt fine all day yesterday; I had no problem walking around, which made me think I didn’t do anything terribly terrible to it. But I wanted to hear someone with an M.D. give me a go-ahead for the tri. And this morning I got that: My doc felt my Achilles, then told me it’s just tendonitis and I should be fine to run Saturday without doing any real damage. He also told me that I should be able to do my marathons this fall, which kind of shocked me—just told me to take it easy the next few weeks and do mostly cross-training.
SO. I guess I will be doing this triathlon after all and might actually be able to finish the run. Whether I’ll be able to run near the pace I can usually hold for 10K’s, however, remains to be seen… But at least now I can focus my fears on the swim!
