Rhett

18 week 

Weekly Report 

Its been a week of battling my left calf injury and the injury won. Saturday morning it was feeling so good I figured I could run normally on it again. Well, I was wrong and reinjured it during the run and now it feels worse than when the injury first happened. All that being said I'm surprised I was able to get it n 27 miles of kinda running/weighted vest walking/hiking this week along with some cycling and core work. 
 

To get over this stupid injury, I'm going to have to quit trying to run on it for the whole upcoming week. I am still going to try and get 5 miles weighted vest walking in each day with a longer trail hike on Friday. I'll also do the bike trainer, core, and lower body weights minus calves. Then, next week hopefully I'll be running without injury for the first time since November. 

124 days

AM. My calf was a bit sore still when I got up this morning, reconfirming my decision not to run this week.  I did some core work followed by 40 minutes on the bike trainer.

PM. I went to a church soccer night with my boys tonight. I love playing soccer even more than I love running, but I used all my will power and just walked while they played soccer so I wouldn't injure my calf again. I found a nice steep hill to walk up and down and got in 3 miles while they played soccer. Walking hills is a good aerobic workout. 

123 days

AM. 3 mile weighted vest walk going up and down a steep hill near my house.  Calf felt perfect and still does.  Is it only Tuesday? I still have 6 more days until I run again. :(

Lunch: 2 mile walk

PM: Core. Lower body. 30 minutes bike trainer.  Hot tub.

122 days

AM.  5 mile weighted vest walk this morning.  Calf is doing great.  It is so tempting to try and run but I know I need to be good.  I can do it!

121 days

AM. I thought about doing another weighted vest walk this morning, but I didn't want to take any chances on aggrivating my calf because I am refereeing my first high school soccer game tonight and I will neeed to be able to run.  Fortunately I am the assistant referee so it won't be as much running as the head ref.  I think I'm going to be fine, but I won't know until I have to sprint down the sideline to keep up with a play.  Anyways, I decided to do core work and then did the bike trainer for 30 minutes and followed that up with some time in the hot tub which is always feels great in the morning. I'll try and remember to run my GPS watch during the game tonight to see how far I run.

PM. Assistant soccer ref. 2 miles of easy sprints over 40 minutes. One team was way better than the other so not a ton of back and forth. My calf held up pretty well but by the end I was glad it was over. Any more and I may have injured myself again. Hopefully it feels ok in the morning. The I got rubbed after. 

120 days

I was a bit worried about my calf this morning when I got up after reffing the soccer game last night. I could feel a little something there when I got out of bed but no pain, so I proceeded with my plan for the day. I gathered all my gear and fuel and put it in my pack and drove to the base of Crossman Peak. It was an unusual day in Havasu... cloudy, windy, and cool. Within the first quarter mile of climbing I was hiking in the clouds with very little visibility. From the base to the top it is 1.77 miles and around 1700 feet elevation gain, so it is pretty steep the whole way. I power hiked up using my trekking poles and kinda ran down slowly. I did it 3 times totally a bit under 11 miles.

My calf seemed to hold up the whole way. I'm reffing another soccer game tomorrow, so hopefully it feels good tomorrow. 

119 days

AM. I haven't done the Saturday morning rides with the group the last couple months because I hate riding in the dark. The sun is starting to come up earlier now so it was only dark for the first tiny bit today. First day back and we did a climbing day and after having climbed Crossman Peak 3 times yesterday my legs were already tired. It didn't take too many climbs before my legs were completely fried but I pushed on as best I could. We ended up doing 32 miles with a bit 2700 feet of climbing. Also I forgot my gels so I rode without much fuel, just the sports drink I had in my one bottle. I definitely had a bit of a bonk today. 
 

Lunch. After getting home from the ride I quickly showered and ate then headed off to Kingman to ref a high school soccer game. When I got there my quads were pretty sore. Luckily I was the assistant and one team dominated the other 11-1 so there wasn't a lot of running down the sideline to keep up with play. The times I did though my calf was good and my quads ached. I only ran 1.5 miles doing the game which I am grateful for.