Week 23

Yet another week of painful ankle tightening.  Admittedly, I still am not getting enough water each day to keep the swelling down.  It has been extremely frustrating as I have not been able to find a good way to stretch out the tightness and have been cutting my runs shorter rather than increasing the distance.  I ran with our coach, Doug, during the group run today so we could try to problem solve and work around this little issue.  Since barefoot running while pregnant is new to everyone in the group, we just tried a few different strategies.  One thought was that maybe I needed to run more on the outside of my feet to accommodate my widening hips and ultimately running stance.  This actually made things worse for me.  I felt like I was already too far to the outside of my feet and may be the reason the tightening is occurring because it is only on the outside of my ankles.  So we took some time to walk and do some dynamic stretching rather than standing to stretch.  This helped a little but I couldn't quite stretch out completely so we turned around and Doug continued ahead with some other group members while I worked on trying to run through the tightness.  I did not get it figured out by the end of the run but I will continue on and keep at it.  I have to force myself to get more water during the work week so I can get the swelling under control.  I think this may be the biggest piece of the puzzle.