One of the hardest parts of coming back from in injury is not letting your head get in the way of your recovery. It had been nearly eight weeks since I'd last run and I knew while I was recovering, I would lose a lot of my fitness - I'd been out of the game for nearly eight weeks.
Here's a great post from Hungry Runner Girl (HRG) on losing fitness while recovering from an injury. According to HRG's post, after 21 days of inactivity, you can expect to lose as much as 10% of your fitness. Ugh. Since I'm not jumping right back into running (only running at most .3 mile at a time), I can't say for sure if I've lost that much of my fitness, but I do know that my body is taking longer to heal in between workouts. I am sure this is due to both my injury as well as being inactive for so long and I'm trying really hard to stay positive and patient. I know in time, I will be back to running full miles, but until that time, I will try my best to stay as positive as HRG. That girl is coming back from an IT band injury and she has stayed so positive throughout the whole experience that she's inspired me to stay focused and remain positive.
Knowing I don't want to push myself too hard, too fast, I decided to do a treadmill interval workout today. I alternated running and walking .25 miles. Each time I ran, I added .1 to my speed. I felt great while running and made sure to challenge myself while keeping myself at a reasonable pace. I felt awesome after my workout. Now I'm off to stretch and foam roll.
What do you do to stay positive while recovering? Do you think the mental is harder than the physical part of recovery?Labels: fitness, injury, interval, running, treadmill
