The Real Cost Of Working Too Hard For Too Long

A few weeks ago, I was running early in the morning in Arizona. I probably should have waited for it to get light out, but I had a busy day ahead of me and wanted to squeeze it in.

I even remember thinking as I left, as I turned on my woefully insufficient flashlight on my phone, I hope this isn’t a mistake.

The answer came not three steps later, when I went down and my ankle rolled hard to the left.

After washing off my scrapes and testing the ankle, I decided to push through the run and got a good five miles in. Tough, right? Just hours later, I could barely keep my shoe on, and putting even the slightest weight on it was painful. By that night, a long bruise covered the length of my foot.

I took about ten days off from running–dutifully elevating and icing it when I could — and even those ten days felt like an eternity to me. Going nearly out of my mind and having tested it with a few brisk walks, I biked and then started running again. My wife told me I was crazy but I was starting a new book and I needed the activity to balance me out. I couldn’t afford not to, I said.

All was well until a Friday morning about two weeks later. I was giving a talk in Kentucky later that evening and wanted to run before we headed to the airport. I didn’t even make it down the…