January the month where everyone starts excercising!

You know the score, Christmas happens and everybody indulges. By Christmas day itself most people have had at least 5 full Christmas dinners and are mostly sick of the sight of turkey.
We indulge in extra alcohol, late nights and a constant supply of cake and nibbles in nearly every work place. But it's OK as calories don't count in December, right?

But then January arrives and it's a complete and utter shock to us all, with no idea how we've all put on a stone in weight. Suddenly the adverts on television for gorgeous platters of food and family buffets have completely disappeared and suddenly our mind space is subliminally seeing adverts for weight loss, diets, healthy eating and of course new years resolutions.

I unfortunately fall into the bracket of piling on the weight over Christmas and I'd like to think this wasn't because I was greedy during Christmas and stuffed my face but more because, on the 1st of December I busted my knee!!!!

Suddenly I went from running three times a week to nothing! No exercise and no matter how hard I tried to stick to healthy eating and small portions it's rather impossible during the festive season to be good all of the time.

Now that January has arrived and I've done the regimented six weeks of rest my knee is feeling a lot better. I started the new year with a new regime of Pilate's 2-3 times a week to try and strengthen me back up for running and then this week excitedly went for my first run. I managed 2 miles!!! I wasn't a lot slower than I was prior to injury so pretty pleased with my effort.

The following week another few Pilate's sessions and my next run. This time 3 miles and again this was a success. Getting excited to be getting back to the running bug that I totally love I went out again, this time for 3.5 miles. Now I'm a sensible person and I didn't want to go out crazy and throw myself into too much too soon. However, in the back of my mind I still have a place for the Plymouth Half Marathon in April, that I had to pull out of last year due to injury so quite keen to increase the mileage slowly.

But during my run, there it goes, a twinge in my Achilles. I continue to run thinking, I'm going to experience twinges as I've not run properly for six weeks?
But upon finishing the measly 3.5 miles I stretched and realised that this wasn't really a twinge and on arriving home could barely weight bear on that leg!!!

I'm devastated as now I'm back to the injury bench which is where I spend most of my running life. I have done the sensible thing yet again to try and aid recovery and am now resting, icing, keeping compression socks on and using a tonne of deep freeze and booked an appointment with the physio to find out what is going on and why I spend more time on the sofa injured that out on the road doing any exercise.

It's hard not to stay positive when you keep getting injured. Just doing simple things like popping to the shop means passing tonnes of runners out enjoying the slightly lighter evenings and getting fitter ready for the spring running season whilst yet again I'm struggling with my injuries and putting on more and more weight.

Fingers crossed that the Physio next week goes well and I will be back to my happy running self very soon.