I seem to have gotten my first workout-related injury, thereby immediately earning some serious workout cred (in my mind, at least). This injury's worse than the bowling injury that beset my right middle finger for entirely too long, keeping me away from the lanes for over a year and putting a serious crimp in my bird flipping. I think I did something to my Achilles tendon. This website is very informative about Achilles injuries and notes the symptoms:
- Pain—aching, stiffness, soreness, or tenderness—within the tendon. This may occur anywhere along the tendon’s path, beginning with the narrow area directly above the heel upward to the region just below the calf muscle. Often pain appears upon arising in the morning or after periods of rest, then improves somewhat with motion but later worsens with increased activity.
- Tenderness , or sometimes intense pain, when the sides of the tendon are squeezed. There is less tenderness, however, when pressing directly on the back of the tendon.
- When the disorder progresses to degeneration, the tendon may become enlarged and may develop nodules in the area where the tissue is damaged.
I have the first two; fortunately, I haven't noticed the third thing yet. I started feeling sore about a month or so ago and mentioned it to Mike the Trainer Guy who cut out the impactful exercises. In the past, we had discussed doing an outdoor session at the high school track, but never got around to doing it. It came up again, but Mike said I prolly didn't want to do it what with my leg hurting and all. I said, Let's do it! How bad can it hurt?
We had the session this past Saturday and by that afternoon my leg hurt, as they say in the vernacular, like a mofo. I did the RICE thing (rest, ice, compression, elevation) -- actually, I did the RCCE thing bc I didn't have ice cubes so used a bag of frozen corn kernels instead -- and that helped somewhat, but still! And the next morning! Who knew a body part could be so sore?! Sunday, I woke up -- so far, so good -- sat up and swung my feet to the side of the bed and owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeee! Merely hanging my leg unsupported in the air hurt! I took more aspirin and did the RICE thing some more, but basically shuffled around the house like somebody's ogre sidekick. Fortunately, it felt much better by Monday morning. Oy. I was just about to write, 'I'll never be that stupid again', but didn't bc that's not true. I will be at least that stupid again and most likely more stupid, but perhaps I can confidently say I won't be that stupid in that particular way again.
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