A Subtle Change

   A couple of weeks ago, I was out on one of my regular runs and I pulled a calf muscle. I am not a hundred per cent sure just how I did this, I started to feel a little tug in the back of my calf about two minutes into the run but I thought it was just one of my normal aches and pains that would right itself after I ran a little more and warmed up. After running another half a kilometer, the pain intensified and eventually felt as though it was circling around to my shin. At this point I wised up and stopped running. Fortunately I was within easy walking distance of home.
   It was about this time, then, that I noticed a subtle change in myself. Any other time I've sprained an ankle, pulled a muscle, gotten a charley horse or been ill and not been able to run, the worst part about it was that it meant I wouldn't be able to play ball hockey. With this new injury, however, my first reaction was crap, I'm not going to be able to do my training runs!
   This seems like a fairly subtle change but it still took me by surprise. The other thing which has subtly taken me by surprise is the amount of looking forward I do to whenever my next run is. It wasn't exactly like this at the beginning of my learn-to-run experience, I had a fair amount of trepidation to our runs in the very early days, it seemed as though we would get to one comfortable level and then just get bumped up to the next, and tougher, level. It wasn't something I really looked forward to. As things progressed, however, I slowly found that I began to happily anticipate these regular runs. At this writing, I'll soon be headed out for my first post-injury run and I'm a little uptight as to the possible result. For one, I feel a little out of shape, not having run for almost two weeks. Secondly, I'm hoping the injury has totally healed. I will spend a little extra time stretching beforehand and then we'll see after that. Wish me luck!