This week I have suffered micro trauma to my gastrocnemius.
To you and me that means my calves were killing me.
For this week's training for the REAL Women's Duathlon I decided to do a "mini-duathlon".
I ran for 25 minutes, hopped on the bike for 15 minutes then jogged for another 10 minutes.
As soon as I stopped running my calves started burning.
I did some stretching them out and the pain was terrible.
The next morning I woke up wondering if I would be able to stand.
My physiotherapist Louise Parker advised me that I had "probably overtrained at bit and caused some micro trauma to your gastrocs".
I had to break my training routine and rest for a couple of days.
Apparently, microtrauma is a good way of making muscles stronger but usually, the ideal is feeling to have no muscle soreness on the day, slight soreness the next day and pretty achey on the second day and gone the third.
Pain on the day is not ideal.
I can vouch for that.
Thankfully, the pain was gone by the weekend and I could get my running shoes back on.
I don't want to undo all the hard work I've put in so far, but I don't want to cause myself an injury, either.
I'm finding getting into a routine is really helpful to keeping up with my training for the duathlon, so the thoughts of breaking my routine were a little bit upsetting. (Me? Upset that I can't exercise? Who would have thought?)More than 1000 women are expected to take part in the duathlon, so it should be quite a fun event.
It's coming around pretty quickly and I feel nervous about it but I think the bit of jogging and cycling I have done so far will help me cross the finish line.
I don't care what time I do it in, I just want to get over the finish line.
And even if I'm last, it won't matter, because I hear the hot guy who does the warm-up with all the women at the beginning crosses the finish line with the last participant.
Bonus!I've also tried to eat healthier foods and drink more water to help my body in the training process.
I've been told my body needs more protein to repair the muscles that I've worked.
So I've been eating more meat than usual.
It's a bit of a struggle to remember to drink plenty of water, too.
But hopefully, after a couple of weeks it will just be routine and I won't have to try so hard.
I feel myself catching the exercise bug and must be getting addicted to endorphins.
I'm feeling pretty good and am very chuffed with the progress I've made - except for the microtrauma of course.
