Excuse Me, What Did You Just Say?

Yesterday morning at the lovely hour of 7:45 am, I had my long-awaited physical therapy appointment with Steve. For once I was glad to be going so I could report to him my ankle flare up, but I was also dreading what he was going to say about it.
I told my sad story (just started the marathon training, hurt more than ever after 8 mile treadmill run, iced it, took two days off, resorted to cross training on the elliptical, etc) and as predicted, Steve told me things that I did not like to hear.

When he learned I've been logging most of my miles on the treadmill in the past few weeks, he was not happy.

Steve: Why have you been doing that?
Me: Because it's hot and I'm a wuss.
Steve: Well, you're going to have to learn to suck it up.
Me: Is it that bad?
Steve: Yes, we see a lot of stress fractures happen because people log too many miles on treadmill and then try to go back to the road. You need to be running outside even if it's hot.
Me: But... but... when I'm on the treadmill the fan blows right on me. And I have a TV... and my headphones... and a trashy magazine to distract me!
Steve: Suck it up.

Next up, he questioned me on how many days a week I'm running. Again, he was not happy with my response of 4. He guarantees that I can train for a marathon with 3 days of running: one day speed work, one medium-length run, and one long run per week along with 2-3 days of cross training. He insists that I shouldn't do more than 3 days of running per week as I continue to work on strengthening my ankle. It needs its rest, so I'm told, to prevent flare ups. (Rest schmest)

The thing about this is, I hate cross training. Sincerely. I feel like the bike is a complete waste of my time and the elliptical isn't much better. Don't even TALK to me about swimming.

::whine:: Why can't I just run? ::whine::


Me being me, I'm not sure if I'm going to 100% listen to Steve's advice. One, I'm hard headed. Extremely hard headed. Once I get something in my head and planned out (like, for instance, a marathon training plan, plotted to the lat mile), I don't react well to changes. Two, I hate being told what to do. Just ask my mother, my husband, my best friend, and anyone else who knows me. You tell me what to do, it's most likely I'll do the opposite. And the more you tell me to do something, the less likely it is to happen. 


But then again, the last thing I want to do is sabotage myself. So I guess I'll make an attempt to run outside (uuuuuuuuugggggggh) for at least some of my upcoming miles. And my compromise on the 3 runs instead of 4 per week is that if my ankle hurts at all, I will cross train on the additional day... BUT if it doesn't hurt, I'm running.


My next appointment with Steve is next Thursday. Hopefully he doesn't try to tell me to do anything else that I don't like. Otherwise, I don't know if he can be my new best friend anymore.