If there were a special education program for endurance athletes, I fear I'd be in a straight jacket, possibly even a solitary confinement cell.
I don't take direction. When things hurt, I work harder at them, seemingly burying myself into an ignominous cellar of agony and injury.
So I seek therapy, only for physical maladies over the psychological ones. One could very well maintain, that I am a hypochondriac of sorts.
I never really was. I consider myself to have a higher threshold of discomfort than several of my peers. But that isn't changing the sheer fact, that I am exponentially more often injured than they.
Further, being injured has reduced me to levels I never was. I am acutely aware of how my undergraduate peers go about perilous daily regimen: Sleep late; Go to bed late; Drink superflous amounts of liquor, and subscribe to poor diet and lifestyle.
I refuse to submit, as I know wherein lies contentment.
My active release therapist, and my coach, and my peers, and my fellow endurance brethren, dictate I need down time. For it was only 10 days ago Disney was run.
In years past, I healed much more quickly after these taxing endeavors. The idea of a zero week never really occured this time, so my ITB flared up, which now has me hobbling downstairs. At least I can walk normally.
So as of now, the conventional wisdom deposited upon me, by coaches and therapists, is to cross train, keep the mileage below 6 miles per day, and take about 10-14 days before resuming distance work ( any running over 10 miles)
The vast majority of the aforementioned principles, I can subscribe to, as I do not have my orthotics currently, which have been inhibitive of injury since I began wearing them.
Maybe in forty years, with God's will, I will be still running. And if I heed this blasphemous rhetoric my peers and coaches are calling "recovery", maybe then I can look back and say this was my finest year.
