Fall is in the air and the leaves are starting get a bit yellow around the edges. It is hard to believe that September is already more than half over.

It has been kind of quiet since last Thursday afternoon. After I had a great couple of workouts that morning, I mowed the lawn and while pushing our old lawn mower up a little incline, I felt something give a little in my left calf.

You know, you plant your foot to push the lawn mower up a small hill, like you have already done too many times already that day and the body didn’t do so well with it. No, I really didn’t think it was all that serious and I kept mowing for another half hour, so it wasn’t a big deal – right.

Well that was four days ago and today was the first time that I successfully ran since it happened.

When I woke up on Friday, the leg hurt enough that I knew that I was not going to run on it, but it was an optional rest day, so I wasn’t too concerned. It bothered to even walk on it, but I still had to walk the dogs, so it got used anyway.

On Saturday and Sunday, the calf was getting better, but it still was not ready for prime time and definitely not ready for running. By Monday the calf had stopped complaining while walking, so I figured that I would get an easy run in and let the calf determine the distance.

Errrr no, I got about 100 yards and shut it down. The calf didn’t feel quite right, I figured out that it wanted at least another day off and wasn’t going to argue about it. I probably could have run a mile, but I am really trying to actually listen to the body and not create lingering problems for myself that could have been avoided with another day or two off.

Let’s get real…That old suck it up buttercup mentality that has caused more runners more problems than any other single thought process. If something hurts or doesn’t feel right professional runners don’t run if they are smart, us crazy arse gotta run runners are the ones that get out there anyways, because we wrongly believe that we have to run no matter what hurts. Then wonder why we get hurt and loose so many running days each year.

I know that I have been guilty of that all too many times and an issue that should have been resolved in 3-4 days, takes 3-4 weeks to get over.

So today, I thought I would go run on the treadmill to see how things felt.

I did a complete warm-up and set the speed to 6.5 mph and kept it there for a mile. No issues with the calf!!!

Yippeee!!!

I also wore my calf compression sleeves all morning and I really do not care what the “experts” say about the lack of results in studies, I can tell when I wear them and when I don’t. Especially, when I am having calf issues, which has been a recurring issue for all too many years.

For me it is more than the “placebo effect” and I will keep using calf sleeves.

Since I was able to run a mile on the treadmill pain-freee, I decided to go out and shoot for an easy 5K and if the calf bothered at all, just shut it down and come back to the gym

The only bad part of all this was that I forgot to bring my Beacons or Zoom Fly v1’s, so I had to choose between my “go faster” shoes or wear zero drop Torin 3.5. I am still adapting to the zero drop, so they were out and 1400s I just didn’t feel like them today, which left my go-fast Zoom Fly SPs.

My big problem during the run was not the calf, that felt fine or at least no worse than usual, was that I was constantly forcing myself to slow the pace back down. There is something about the SPs that just feel right under foot and I want to go faster than I should or in this case planned.

I ended up with a 26:06 for the 5K without pushing the pace, but the best part was that my calf didn’t grumble too much and this afternoon when I mowed the lawn it was fine.

A new self-propelled lawn mower did help get the 3.0 miles that I have to cover a little easier. This is probably our last walk behind mower and the next time we get around to getting one, I will be a lot closer to being old and decrepit, so a riding lawn mower will find its way here in 7-8 years. Hehehee

The reality is that

Today was a nice workout where I got to test the calf and it didn’t complain anymore than usual about having to run. Which was a very good thing after 4 days of no running.

Sometimes the body knows what it needs and if I do not listen it sends the message a bit more strongly, so that I have to pay more attention.

I do remember telling Mary that I wanted to keep my week’s total under 25 miles last week. When I finished my runs on Thursday I had 24.7, so my mind/body got together and decided that I had run enough and took the rest of the week off and one more day this week for good measure.

I listened a little closer than I usually do, now I need to keep doing it.