Day Eight – Stone Mtn

Well, he pulled one over on me today. It was supposed to be “abs day” again, which I thought meant another day on the mats. Thus, since it was bulky last time, I didn’t wear my back support, nor did I wear my ankle compression things for running.

So, today we did running and abs… “Abs on the go”, where we run for 6 minutes then stop and do some ab work, then run, then abs, then run, then abs. The abs, today, were not so bad. The running, however, was murder. So. Much. Pain.

My legs already hurt so much last night that I couldn’t sleep until I finally got up to take two Alleve. This morning, by exaggerating my stride to really run heel to toe, it wasn’t as painful as walking, but I sure couldn’t go very fast. Didn’t walk it, though, just slow jogged it, and tried not to cry.

The last leg back to the cars, however, he wanted us to sprint again … which is what killed my legs in the first place … and of course, I totally just do it. Sprinting is running mostly on your toes, aggravated everything that was already screaming, but what the hell, sprinted it all the way in, swinging arms and staring at my goal. Of course, after that I could barely stand.

James drove us home, and I walked some and we both stretched out a lot more. James tried to work on my calf muscles as I stretched, and decided that my pain must mostly be in the tendons. “Like having tennis elbow in your legs,” he said. Just his hands on them, roughly trying to figure out if my muscles were knotted up caused so very much pain, I really couldn’t move for a bit.

Once that passed, though, I could actually walk a bit better. The muscles did feel more lose after he worked on them, and I managed to get the shoes off and get showered up. Afterwards, rubbed on some Bio-Freeze and now have both legs compressed with wraps pretty tightly. Really couldn’t get any sleep afterwards just from the constant discomfort, but after several hours now, I really think the compression is helping. Rather than feeling like every step is tearing muscles away from bone and bringing tears to my eyes, now it is just sort of annoying, kind of like I’ve severely sunburned both legs from the knee down, and I can constantly feel my pant leg rubbing against the burn to irritate me.