Progress even though it doesn't look like it

Today marks real progress for me. I went to the track for another of my 2 min joggin/1 min walking workouts (hoping to do 1.5 or 2 miles) as I come back from my foot injury. I was a little more tired than I expected because I went out for a bike ride yesterday for the first time in quite a while. I planned for an easy 13-mile ride, but since my husband didn't join me, I got bored and found myself racing through the workout.

After the first lap at the track, I started to feel my foot. No pain, just a little something that didn't feel quite right. At first I couldn't tell if it was just routine soreness from the foot healing or if I was aggravating it. I tried to make a couple of micro-changes to my running to get the sensation to stop but it wouldn't -- so I did. Because here's the thing I've learned about injuries: If you are body sensing -- being aware of of the way your body feels rather than focusing on finishing the run no matter what -- you can catch a problem long before it becomes an injury.

Here are a few steps the body goes through before injury.

1. Sensation -- Something just doesn't feel feel right. Call it a twinge or whatever. It doesn't hurt but there's a hint of something going on.

2. Discomfort -- When you don't pay attention to the sensation and make an adjustment, the sensation can turn into discomfort. Still not painful, but certainly getting worse.

3. Pain -- Here's where you know something is going on. Stopping is the right thing but sometimes we press on for any number of reasons -- most have to do with our egos.

4. Injury. You've ignored the sensation, the discomfort, and the pain and now you've actually done some damage and will no doubt will have to take a few days off.

Normally, i would have allowed myself to get to at least Step 3. But I am trying very hard this time around to ignore what I want to do and pay attention to what I need to do. And what I need to do to run injury free is to pay attention and be more flexible about how much and how often I run. I need to let my body tell me what it's ready to do rather than how far I want to run.

So while I really didn't get any kind of a run in today, I consider today's workout a success because my new measure of success is this: Being able to run another day.