Listen To Your Body
If you've been keeping up with this blog, then 1) thanks, you're awesome! And 2) you'll probably remember that I had a few posts about dealing with a hamstring injury late last year. That taught me an important lesson that I've touted before and will continue to beat this drum - no pun intended, that listening to your body is of utmost importance.
Sure, you can probably find some off the wall example of when I'm wrong, but I'm talking primarily from a general health and wellness perspective.
Last weekend, I posted about my new distance personal record of 12 miles. It was a fun run, as it always is when I can get a new personal record, and I felt pretty good throughout the run. After I finished though, I had a pain in the outside of one of my feet. It didn't feel great to walk on it and the pain persisted to the next day so naturally I was concerned as I need my feet for both running and drumming.
Through some low level internet research, I figured that the pain was most likely the result of one of about three things, the worst of which being a stress fracture. WebMD had me feeling like I may never walk again, but the less apocalyptic and more realistic prognosis is that I strained it or something. In any event, I needed to stay off of it for several days and I finally learned from my previous mistake of trying to push through it too early. When I was rehabbing my hamstring, I got antsy to get back out running and I ended up dragging that strain around for a month or so. This time, I've taken several days off to make sure I'm as close to 100% as possible.
I figure that the week or so I take off of training for my half marathon coming up in April will take far less of a toll on my overall performance than if I do something stupid and get sidelined with a more serious foot problem.
Because you know what Lieutenant Dan said: "take care of your feet and stop this bus,"
Or something like that.
If you've never done an ice bath, it's kind of bizarre and painful, but it does get easier after the first couple times. I'm still working up the nerve to do an ice bath for my whole lower body, maybe that's a postrace recovery event.