RunColo Blog

After running the San Diego Marathon, I took 8 days off and started to resume my training. When I started running again my Achilles was a bit sore and has remained sore since and progressively gotten more sore.

A few weeks ago it got to the point where it was pretty bad and it even hurt to the touch. Actually both of them were sore, but my left leg was really bad. I decided to take three days off from running last week, thinking it would get better and I could continue on the push for training up to Des Moines Marathon.

I often think I can run through injuries. I learned the hard way a few years ago, five weeks out until the Lincoln Marathon and I had a sore hip flexor. I kept running and raced the Platte River Half and injured it during the race and could barely walk for the next week and it took about 12 weeks of no running to finally get to a point where I could run again. Lesson learned.

This morning, woke up and was starting a 20 mile run. I ran 1/2 mile with the Achilles hurting and thought to myself, what am I doing. I just couldn't see myself training through the pain for another 10 weeks, trying to do a long run with the pain. Let alone, if it hurt this much running 50mpw, something bad was bound to happen once I started getting into the 70-80mpw.

I stopped the run and walked back to the car, called it quits. Time to rest up; don't want to have a chronic Achilles injury, just not worth it. Not really sure how long it will take to heal, looks like anywhere from a couple of weeks to 12 weeks, worst case scenario.

Did some research, going to continue to the stretching and do some calf strengthening exercises. I'm guessing Des Moines might be out of the question, perhaps I just run it knowing that I can't get a PR, settle for a ~3 hour marathon or maybe I can get into enough shape to run a PR in the half marathon.

We'll see.