The Achilles Is a Pain!

   It started for me with an innocuous fall during a training run in the late winter of 2011. I twisted my right ankle in a pothole, got up, dusted the gravel and blood off my right knee, and continued my run.
   Even with the fall and ensuing short recovery walk, I finished that hilly 5.85-mile run under my target time of 50 minutes.
   The ankle felt worse the next day, a typical sprain. I think I switched to the bike and elliptical for less than a week (I was training for my annual Spring half-marathon), and then resumed normal training. The Achilles really didn't bother me too much during this time, but the pain was always present.
   Over the past year-and-a-half, as I've stepped up my training for other races, the Achilles pain has never gone away. Some days, I can daydream during my normal run, and not really worry about it. Other days, the only thing I can think about is how much it hurts. I'm always amazed, on those runs, that I can actually finish it in a time comparable to when I'm feeling healthy. The only thing that I can conclude is that I'm pushing that much harder, and concentrating that much more, to get the same result.
   A couple of months ago, I developed a new pain on the inside of my right knee, which on most days, was even more intense than the Achilles pain. Ice, heat, running, cross-training: repeat. Somehow, the knee pain has mostly disappeared, and the ankle pain is manageable, for the most part.
   Doing some reading on the subject, I realize why it takes so long to heal from an Achilles injury. The Achilles is the body's longest and strongest tendon, but also has a very big workload. Because it connects the calf muscles to the heeel bone, the Achilles is involved in walking, jumping, running, and going up and down steps (things I do all day as a Personal Trainer).  According to a column by Dr. Donohue in the Newark Star-Ledger, at times the Achilles absorbs the force of 12 times your body weight!
   The slight sprain I incurred loosened the tendons in my ankle, and the Achilles pain is the result of not resting it afterward (a practical impossibility, on my part).  I've just got to live with it, I guess!