Rest and recovery

It's been 5 days since I made the decision to stop my Runvember challenge and rest my swollen ankle and so far I've managed not to spiral into the depths of depression. I think this was mostly down to my Mam visiting for the weekend which involved copious amounts of food, alcohol and laughter - obviously the best medicine for any miserable injured runner!

I ran for 12 consecutive days and in that short time I actually felt like I was becoming a runner, rather than a person who just goes out for the occasional run. I could be looking back with rose tinted spectacles here but some small part of me actually liked getting up an hour before I needed to, in the dark (and sometimes rain) and dragging my weary body around the streets for 45 minutes - or the feeling of having done something useful with my lunch hour after a run along the canal. I miss that feeling of achievement that I had after every run (well, the good ones) and the excitement of those little kudos notifications popping up on Strava. Most of all I miss the time of reflection and thinking that running gave me as I enjoyed my wandering thoughts during a run, sometimes using it to think over big 'life' things and sometimes being practical and thinking of what I can make for dinner without having to go to the shop on the way home - things that our hectic daily lives sometimes leave little time to think about.

I definitely made the right decision to stop running as after 4 days of Ibuprofen and wearing a support bandage my ankle is still slightly swollen so God knows what state I would have been in now if I was still trying to run on it. Today is the best it's felt so far and I'm optimistically hoping that it'll be feeling so good by Friday that I might go for a little jog at the weekend - we shall see. In reality all was not lost by having to stop and rest, in fact it's probably just proven to me that I could really get to like this running malarkey!