So it’s been a few weeks now since I had sprained the ever
living hell out of my ankle. The swelling has gone down considerably to the
point that it’s all pretty much gone as well as the bruising is no longer visible.
The other good thing is that I am walking on it better and doesn’t hurt as much,
just when I am standing on it all day due to my work. I have been soaking in Epsom
salts and doing stretches to keep it lose and limber in hopes of it now healing
stiff. The only bad thing about the situation is that I can tell it is far from
strong and there is no way I can run on it at this point in time. And that is
the thing that is killing me the most.
I never realized how much I would miss running and have
fallen into a bit of a slump. In this nice cool fall weather I can think of
nothing more than I would like to do than that of lacing up my sneakers,
strapping on my Nike watch (cheap plug) and hitting the pavement to push myself
mile after mile. To have those thoughts half way through a run “why the hell am
I doing this?” and then to be thrilled and excited at the end and ready for
another run…runners are weird and we are damn proud of it.
So my slump would be ok so long as I wasn’t such an
emotional eater and consuming mass amounts of things that I should not be, i.e.
fried macaroni and cheese bites…although they are mighty fine tasty goodness. Oh
and I cannot forget the mass quantities of pizza and burgers with diet soda
thrown in for good measure. Yeah I have completely fallen off of my clean
eating standard for the past few weeks, but when I can’t do the thing I love
and desire to do I fall back onto food, I guess that really is the true meaning
and nature of comfort food. Oh and I cannot forget the Popeye’s chicken, 5
spicy drumsticks in one sitting, let’s not judge me on this shall we because I
do that enough o myself. I will say that for breakfast I am eating my bananas
and I do drink about a gallon of water a day, so I am not completely off the
wagon, but still not as good as I was.
So what do I do? How do I workout and keep active to the
point that I don’t injure my ankle even more and to make sure I am ready for a
run? Best way I found out is to hit the internet, talk to fellow runners and
talk to medical professionals. So after doing some research I have found some
tips for working out with an injury and some work arounds, now again I am not a
trained professional in this stuff and what I am doing was after research and talking
to my doctor so see your doctor before attempting to make sure you are good to
go. 
Since this is an ankle injury obviously you can work the
legs so what can you do? Well that’s easy, you work the upper body because that’s
the part not injured. Some of the exercises recommended to me were using the
rope pull-down machine and the hand bike. I wish I had a hand bike at my gym
because I would’ve used that like crazy. Heck you could even do some push-ups
if its only one leg injured, just cross your legs and go to town also work on
your core, do abs exercise that do not make you use your legs or in my case
ankle, so I prop my feet on a weight bench and crunch my heart out plus if you
look online or even pintrest you can find tons of exercises to help you in this
regard.
Ok so now for me that was the easy part, getting my but in
gear and motivated to keep active has always been a strength of mine. However
there is that pesky issue of the food situation. As I said before I am a total
emotional eater and so my food reflects my mood, when I run and am feeling good
I am eating clean and healthy, and then when I am down and out…well…you read
the menu earlier. The hardest part for me is to get away from the convenience
of quick ready unhealthy food. I need to stay true to good eating with the
occasional “bad” food mixed in…because I will not be denied pizza every now and
then. So these cravings come to me usually on my drive from work and the safe
guard I have put in place are to have a bottle of water and a Larabar (another
shameless plug) in my car and ready for me so as I sit in traffic I am not
thinking about those mac and cheese bites. 
Now for some the exercise part is hard and the food part is
easy. Well no matter what is harder or easier the thing I have realized is that
you cannot give up what you have accomplished, because the only one to blame is
yourself if you faulter. You can think back to when you hurt your ankle and you
can think of the thousands of ways you could’ve protected yourself from doing it,
but its done and over with…move on and push forward. Also, good friends to help
keep you motivated are sometimes very crucial in keeping your mental state
clear and on course.
Be safe and run hard,
JB
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