INJURED NO MORE

Yesterday was my first post knee injury run. It was F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C., seriously how do people live without running! I met up with my running partner Jess and we agreed to just do 6km run to ease my knee back into the swing of things and I think the rest period may have been the best thing for my running. From the moment I injured my knee I realized how much I had wasted my energy, my motivation, how I had taken for granted something I really loved. This is the only explanation I have for the fresh power I seemed to have, we finally conquered a hill that Jess has been telling me she could never run (I had run it before with my friend Chris), I ran like I had wings.

There were a few little things that I think were key to coming back to running and feeling amazing, not medical just purely what worked for me:


1. Pilates, from the second week I started gentle stretching and a variety of gentle Pilates exercises to keep the muscles around my knee flexible but never pushed so far as to be in any serious pain.

2. Only train in the absence of pain- this was the advice I was given by a fellow Pilates instructor/Bio, best advice ever. While I did start stretching I didn’t do any cardio till my leg was pain free.

   

3. Start easy, I felt things out seeing how my knee would respond to gentle GENTLE lunging, climbing stairs etc, then I did a little bit of spinning working with different levels of resistance and waited to see how I would feel the next day and only after being able to spin and not feel tight the next day did I feel ready to run.

4. Lastly, keep your head in the game. When you train with enough people in a variety of sports you get to see how injury can effect people. Often once we're injured we throw in the towel- "screw the diet, forget the weight training I'm going to eat junk food and sit on the couch". Thanks to my husband I learnt from his injuries, the fastest way to get back into your game is to keep at it- I kept eating healthy, I was still in the Pilates studio 4-5 times a week to train others and I did what I could ie. working arms, abs and flexibility.

Moral of the story, once I finished feeling sorry for myself I felt ready to pick myself up and get better and I felt better yesterday than ever before, I have a renewed sense of the importance of goals and working towards my best. Hope my experience helped a little if you find yourself in a weak spot.

xx Caz

PORT ELIZABETH

Twelve hours in the car, a friends wedding took across an endless expanse of sand and rock to my first visit to the windy city, Port Elizabeth. All I saw for the first 30 minutes entering P.E. was low cost government housing, informal settlements and garbage stuck to fences and littered over grass as far as the eye could see. We drove following the GPS to our friends parents house where we would be staying, this didn’t seem right, the tin roofs and broken fences didn’t match the family I grew up with. On arriving at our destination once driving through the heart of what was definitely a township, I argued passionately with my husband that this could not be the address. We phoned our friend- yes we were in the wrong area. Driving out of the area and into an area which more accurately matched how I had pictured P.E. we met our two friends in a parking lot, laughing between the cars about our silly adventure to kick start the weekend.We finally got to the correct house and with some awkward hugs we rushed through showers and catch up conversations out to dinner to meet our friend’s fiancé.

The laughing started from the first hello and there were few moments over the five days where we weren’t laughing. Warren, my brother Rory, our friend Dave and Ross (the groom) are old school friends and my brother and I grew up with Ross. So many funny stories were told over again and our little trip into what is fondly known in P.E. as gun town (yes it was a township) was told to everyone who we ate or drank with all weekend.The wedding was perfect, just outside of P.E; a picnic, a sit down dinner and a bonfire- Ross and Shyna really tried to make their day perfect and memorable for all their guests and it truly was. A little run on the beach on the Sunday after the wedding (insert knee injury and tears here), a spit braai, a trip to Jeffrey’s bay for the day and one last dinner all together promising to not wait another three or four years to see each other and it all ended as quickly as it began.

Port Elizabeth was beautiful, but I think mostly because of the people we shared it with.