Frustrated at my minorly injured leg and worried that sub-4 glory was slipping away, last night I decided to throw the last remaining weapon in my arsenal at said leg. Yes I’ve had a sports massage, yes I’ve iced it and RICE’d it and rubbed ibuprofen and foam rollers on it and, while these help a bit, they haven’t cured it. Truth be told I’ve been hoping that all of these would act like some magic wand fixing it like brand new. That hasn’t happened.
So I rummaged in my box of tricks and out came the Vibrams. ‘That might work’, I thought. I trotted off for a 3-mile run but something wasn’t right. Where before the Tarahumara within me had taken over and my feet slipped effortlessly into their preferred gait, instead I was clunky and lopsided and generally looked like a bit of an idiot. This shouldn’t be. Instead of Zola Budd I was Jabba the Hut.
Grass – that will save me. Except in my little corner of SE1, grass (the sort you can run on anyway) is in short supply. I swung by the Tate Modern outside which is a 50m by 50m square of grass. This square of grass is usually full of school children, tourists and local office workers – perfect for doing 50m sprints on then. I found a clear strip and proceeded in running back and forth as fast as my gammy leg could manage.
Now I kow what you’re going to say, and I would say the same if it wasn’t me that had the problem. I’ve even screamed the same thing at internet forums and fellow bloggers when they’ve had similar injuries – the only thing that will fix the leg is rest. But let’s just park that idea for a while should we because it ain’t going to happen.
Back to the story, I did my 50m ‘look at me’ sprints in front of a curious audience and that was quite enough humiliation so I headed home. But I was shy by about half a mile. There’s an even smaller piece of grass in the park by my flat – the one with the odd outdoors treadmill – so I ran around in circles. Luckily at the precise moment that a group of boys with a football started to wonder why there was a girl in socks running in small circles, a small dog started barking at an old man doing Tai Chi to distract them. Saved.
The results of the run – my leg didn’t hurt after. Hooray the plan worked. But it does hurt again this morning. Rubbish! So I’ve thrown a different pair of shoes at it today – it can spend the day in heels and see how much it likes that. Then maybe it will appreciate being back in trainers tomorrow and stop being such a moaning little wimp.