Day 4 of Pain

So, apparently both Jenni and I suck at blogging on a regular basis. This could also be due to the fact that we both suck at training alone. If we lived in the city, we would be logging miles like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately, with no training partners, I think we are both lagging in our half marathon training.

I have been running a reasonable amount of times per week, but have been sucking in the mileage department. I just can't convince myself to go out and run 10 miles in the freezing cold.  Once school let out, I was determined to get my ass into gear. On Christmas eve day, I ran 10K, which was not as much as I needed to do, but at least a start in the right direction.  A few days later because it was too snowy and icy outside, I decided to run the stairs in my building at work. I figured a 5 minute warm up jog around the building, then 20 minutes of running stairs, followed by a five minute cool down jog. No problem, right?

Bahahahahahaha.

Boy was I wrong. Not only did my legs shake for 6-8 hours afterward, I woke up the next day with CRIPPLING calf pain. So bad, in fact, that the act of going downstairs for breakfast took about 5 minutes because I had to pause after each stair to keel over in agony. The only thing that has ever caused me this much pain before was snowboarding. It hurt to make the slightest movements with my legs. Even just walking was torturous, so I spent most of the day in my office chair.

I woke up on Day 2 after running the stairs and the pain was even worse. I didn't know that it was possible to feel more pain in ones calf muscles than I had felt on Day 1. I decided that my problem was my lack of activity the previous day, which had not allowed my muscles to unclench themselves, or whatever was going on. My brilliant plan of action was to go for a run. Easier said than done. I attempted to start running a few times, each resulting in so much pain that I had to stop immediately. I figured the least I could do was walk the route I planned on running. After about 10 minutes of walking, I tried running again, and while painful, it was not unbearable this time. I ended up walking and running 3 miles. Unfortunately, the running did not help to alleviate the pain because it was basically the same on Day 3

Today is Day 4 since the fateful stair-running day, and I am still in pain. Today I managed to run 4 miles, and it was not terrible. I hope that within the next couple of days I will be able to move up and down stairs without wanting to die. One can dream....