Added salt to a lockdown injury?

*** The Serpie Mental Health blog needs YOU *** If you would like to write a post, please email wellbeing@serpentine.org.uk

Added salt to a lockdown injury?

When this whole lockdown started, the last reason that I thought I wouldn’t be running was because of injury – but here we are, three weeks later, having covered a total of approximately 6km.

Before you all start worrying (I know you were all concerned, bless you), it’s nothing too serious. The culmination of a seemingly ridiculous amount of mud on Hampstead Heath that anyone who ran one of the two cross countries would still be having nightmares about and the unseasonably baking hot weather the other week that I definitely made the most of on my building’s roof, led to a very uneven running surface and ultimately my downfall (quite literally).

One mis-step whilst not concentrating caused my left foot to give way and I rolled my ankle, ending up in an ungainly heap on the floor. It also left the surrounding dog-walkers in a predicament too – I could see they definitely wanted to help me, but at the same time they definitely didn’t want to breach the two-metre invisible barrier to get covered in the virus-coated sweat of a potential super-spreader. So, I think they were quite relieved when I hobbled off on my way, content in the knowledge that their ‘are you OK?’ was enough for their good deed for the day, and helped them justify their toddle across the Heath.

Having eventually made it the 2km back home, set the run to private on Strava (never to see the light of day again), and made a brew, I surveyed the damage. The ankle was immediately swollen, so not good. Over the next day it turned a lovely shade of green and showed no sign of abating – a sure sign that I may need to spend some time not running.

And so, the pining through other people’s Strava profiles began. I’d been told of people deleting the app whilst injured, but hadn’t ever needed to before. I couldn’t bring myself to do it – the social network it becomes when running turns into an integral part of your life, leading to an addiction that is well documented – fuelled by ‘kudos’, connected runs, and mileage goals. Having come off the back of a marathon training plan that had seen me track everything for about 20 weeks alongside two equally committed friends, the last thing I felt like doing was abandoning that community right now. 

It also coincided with a seemingly exponential growth in Facebook friends using Strava; mainly to log their first ever 5km runs in support of the NHS (in what I can only imagine is done in horrendous array of non-suitable running footwear).  
At the same time, the Serpie Virtual 5K and London Marathon Relay events came into being – and why would I delete Strava right before that multitude of results started appearing of my timeline?

But at the same time, scrolling through people running faster, running further and feeling like you’re being left behind because you aren’t able to be training is always disheartening – and even more so when the size of your ankle restricts your ‘daily exercise’ to a walk to the end of your street and back. In a time when you’d approached lockdown with the attitude that it was an opportunity to take control of the roads with the absence of central London traffic, Strava adds a mountain of self-pity.

Ultimately, I think that summarises my love-hate relationship with Strava. Whilst with other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter I’d previously made a conscious effort to limit my time spent checking, I’d never set myself those restrictions with Strava. I’d instead concluded that the data gained by my activities was too important to avoid on a daily basis and so ploughing through the numbers was justified.

Will that change? It has over the past week or two. I don’t intend to spend as much time as I once did on the app when I’m bored on the bus or the sofa; I have now recognised the pull it has on keeping you ‘connected’. But that doesn’t mean I won’t stop enjoying thinking of hilarious captions for an interval session around Parliament Hill track once this ankle is well-rested and healthy again.


from Jon Lewis and the Serpie Mental Health Champions


If you would like to talk to a Mental Health Champion, and/or if you would like to write a post, please email wellbeing@serpentine.org.uk

Please share across Serpie land and foward to anyone you think might like this
Serpies survive Covid-19 blog: https://serpies.blogspot.com/2020/03/day-3.html

Views in this blog are the author’s own, it does not constitute advice, neither Serpentine nor the Serpentine Mental Health Champions and Ambassadors recommend or endorse this post and it has not been independently verified

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What good is a running club in a time of pandemic?

This is the Serpie Mental Health weekly blog - reaching out with words during COVID-19 The whole country is currently in lockdown, but everyone’s individual lockdown looks different. Our self-isolation started three weeks ago and for us it means that we only leave the house at 6am for a walk and stay indoors for the rest of the day. You see in my household there is someone who suffers from asthma and that makes us extra vigilant, we avoid all human contact.  The advantage of early morning walks is that the streets are empty. We can roam the streets of London without seeing another human being for a while. It is also the time when the air seems to be fresher, the birds louder, and you can see the morning light change. And for the last two weeks there has been this distinctive smell of spring in the air, which smells so wonderfully fresh and sweet at the same time. The disadvantage of getting up early is that I feel too tired to go for a run. And so my runs have been sadly not as
Read more

Day 3...

Image
Hello to all Serpies! *** We decided to make this blog a weekly event, on Wednesday club day, to keep in touch with each other and share what's going on at this crazy time! *** I just re-read the editor’s introduction I wrote for Serpentimes Issue 11. Published on March 13th, what seems like a lifetime ago now, my introduction addressed the importance of sport in fostering new friendships and how vital sport and social connections are to mental health. A week into the Covid-19 quarantine, the thoughts expressed in my introduction seem truer than ever.  All club events and training sessions have been cancelled. I must admit, that lately, I rarely made it to the Wednesday and Saturday runs, but it comforted me to know they were there and to know that I could show up and count on having a run with someone, be they an old friend or a new face. Now these runs, as well as fixtures like the Handicap, have been taken away indefinitely and it has left me with a sense of loss. If I kn
Read more

Well, this is taking a while, isn't it?

Image
*** It's Mental Health Awareness Week ***  Now more than ever, we need to look after not only our mental health, but that of others too W ell, this is taking a while, isn't it?  I don’t know how many of us expected lockdown to last this long. When my colleagues and I left the office in March, the scientific part of my brain didn’t expect to be back in there until at least June. But a softer side of my brain wanted to cling to the reassuring idea of ‘just be a few weeks.’ I’ve been working from home for two months now. For much of that time, working from home has meant working from hometown. I’ve still got my ‘grown-up job,’ but I’m sleeping in the bed I slept in as a teenager. So far, it’s been good – apart from when I had to suspend a new office buddy for misconduct. I could tolerate Jake jumping on the keyboard when all it meant was that his totally adorable face overshadowed any of my contributions in video meetings. But I had to take action, unfortuna
Read more