"We are men of action, lies do not become us."

-The Princess Bride

My left ankle. New strategy. I've spent the last year and a half doing rehab, pushing too far, setting back, pushing too far and resigning myself to days at the gym with no running or cycling. I'm not nearly patient enough to endure this any longer.

Intuition reveals itself in funny ways. Religious folks believe if they pray hard enough, the answer will come to them through the mouth of God (or sonny Jesus to quote the toughest screw every to walk Shawshank). Some say it's the fact that they've given birth that allows them to see what needs to be done or know what will happen. Not sure what it was with me, but the other night as I was walking to my car in mesh shorts and a tech tee on my way to the gym, I decided that was going to jog around the block, just to see what would happen.

Until that moment my strategy was going to be rehab, strength and stretching for another 3-4 weeks to see what kind of improvement I was experience. If it was little to none I was going to head back to the doctor for a referral to a specialist and perhaps a second MRI. So this decision to run around the block was contrary to what I had laid out for myself. But the little voice spoke and I didn't argue. I didn't go back in to change into more appropriate running clothing or put my keys away; I walked down the driveway, and starting a light jog around our miniscule block.

As expected the ankle hurt in all the usual places but I figured if nothing else it would feel good just to feel my heart rate up and all the usual running perks. But over the course of the 2-3 minutes it took to round our block, my mind formulated a new strategy: to start running regardless of the pain. I'd go every other day and in between I'd continue to strengthen and do all my PT exercises. Not sure why this makes sense, it just does. The only time my ankle has felt good recently is after stretching or working it, so why not run through the pain?

I ran a little bit longer the day before yesterday, last night at the gym I did a few laps on the track and today I got out for 15 minutes. There are moments that it hurts, but it's nothing I can't run through. The bottom line for me is I don't want to wait around and see if it gets better. The way I figure it, there are two possible outcomes from this experiment:

1. The running helps, the ankle heals and before long I'm back to normal and no longer posting long winded, whiny posts on my blog about my damn ankle.

2. It exasperates the situation. It gets worst, blows up, something tears, it becomes so sore I can barely walk. In this case I go back to the doctor, but at least I'll have something to show her. Even if doesn't get this bad, if it doesn't get better I'm back at the doctor's office.

I'm not waiting around any longer and let this thing linger into 2010. Time to take action.