It's that time of year again, specifically Thanksgiving, where thousands of people head out into the wild to trot after turkeys. Or trot as turkeys. Look, somehow there are turkeys involved.

Previously, I had gone through my calf injury and my intentionally slow recovery. I was poking around in Strava and these two views I thought were worth sharing, to show how dramatic the pivot away from running to walking was.

Now walking miles for the same period:

Today, a Saturday, was long run day and I did manage to go 10mi without reinjuring myself. Yay.

Maybe next Saturday I'll get to 13.1mi so I can continue my streak of half-marthons every month.

If you run, you will get injured. It's not an if, it's a when. The severtity is the real wild card. A long time ago I had issues with my calves. Nothing too serious, just nagging little muscle pulls and cramps and the like. I started wearing compression socks and that seemed to clear those minor injuries up. Putting compression socks on, while certainly not the most difficult thing in the world, is harder than putting on low-cuts.

I got lazy and started wearing low-cuts on my 5mi runs. I can't prove this is why I got a calf strain, but I'll settle for correlation. This happened on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 during a 5mi run. I was on my way back, as I always just do an out and back, and something just started feeling wrong in my right calf. I took the next three days off from running and I was thinking I could still get a decent Saturday long run in with the rest.

I was so very, very wrong. I made the injury worse and so I started to break out all the remedies, including no more running until I was more confident I wasn't going to hurt myself further. I know remedies for running injuring are hotly debated, so I'm not pushing these, they are just what I used.

I started icing a few times a day. I broke out the foam roller. I even gave PEMF a try. Luckily, through True Kneads I have easy access to one of these contraptions. I started wearing compression socks on my walks, which replaced any planned runs.

Finally, on Saturday, August 16, I felt like I could try a slow (11min/mi pace) jog. It went pretty well. I made sure to ice aftwards, but in general the run did not make things worse. That was almost two weeks off and it didn't feel great, but again, I didn't want to make it worse by being stupid.

Today, Sunday the 18th, I figured I would try and get back on the normal 5mi schedule, but keep the slower pace. Right now a 10min/mi pace is the limit. Anything faster than that and I can start to feel the calf complain. Again, it went relatively well and I didn't make things worse. I'll keep the ice and rolling going until I can get back to normal pace. I'm not sure what I'll do about the Saturday long run...I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

The Regular Schedule:

• Mon - 5mi run
• Tue - 4.5mi walk
• Wed - 5mi run
• Thu - 5mi run
• Fri - 4.5mi walk
• Sat - 10+mi run
• Sun - 4.5-6.5mi hike

One of the things I picked up while participating in Fleet Feet running programs is the weekly long run. My weekday runs are between 4-6 miles, because I'm doing them before work and there is a limit to how early I will get up to exercise, and that limit is 5:30am.

Since I'm not training for anything in particular, it's not a big deal to me that I tripled my weekdays runs on my weekend long run. I'm sure for a training program that would be a big no-no, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've made it to the end of the Upper Bidwell Park fire road 5 times now and this was the fastest of them all. Not bad for a guy in his 50s!