My Body for a Dunk

Sunday March 7th was a great game of football - I ran, passed, caught, pivoted, etc. with no complaints from my hip. Near the end of the game however I really whanged my left shin into another player's knee or something. I sat out a couple of plays but made it in to finish the game. I could tell it would bruise but having had a similar shin-smashing earlier didn't think it would be significant.

And for a while it wasn't. I did weights on Monday, Death Machine on Tuesday, took Wednesday off, weights on Thursday... and although my shin still felt a little off, I just chalked it up to the bruise. There's zero protection between the bone and the skin - no fat and just a small muscle - so I figured at worst I'd banged the shin bone pretty hard. Well, Friday I go in for a run on the treadmill and almost immediately my left leg begins firing off pain signals. From the ankle up to the knee my leg is sending out weird sensations from areas I had never really been aware of until they started hurting. I made it two miles and finally had to stop. As soon as I got off the treadmill my left ankle blew up, forcing me to limp and walk like a couple of nails had been shot through the joint.

Since Friday afternoon I've tried to stay off my feet as much as possible. The pain has subsided but I can only walk a short distance before it flares back up. Just now I was at the store for 20 minutes and my leg is still throbbing. I don't think it is broken, but if the pain is still there Thursday I'll get it x-rayed. Saturday and Sunday I didn't go into the gym and I feel like crap. I've become such a gym monkey that two days off is causing me to drag! I'll make an effort to go tomorrow, but I will not be able to do any cardio workouts (runnning or Death Machining) until this thing is healed. I'm pretty sure doing squats won't be helpful either, but we'll see.

So this is definitely the first set-back. I can keep concentrating on building up my leg muscles into tree trunks, but without the carido break in-between workouts I'm not sure what I'll do. I'm tempted to go back to every other day workouts, but that'll depend primarily on the condition of my leg. Curse this broken body of mine!