Category: free-inquiry

This week felt heavy. Not because my pain got worse. Physically, things are actually improving. But mentally, this has probably been one of the hardest weeks so far.

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General Overview

Overall, there has been real progress. I’ve been tracking my pain daily, and this week my baseline dropped to a 2–4 out of 10. Before this, I was consistently sitting at a 5–6. There have been a couple spikes, but they don’t last long, which feels significant. My physio also cleared me to begin incorporating more strength training beyond just isometric exercises, which feels like forward motion.

I’m still not cleared for any cross-training. No biking. No swimming. No long walks. Nothing that gives me that aerobic release, and I think that’s where the mental struggle is really coming from.

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The Endorphin Gap

I miss pushing myself. I miss the feeling of finishing a hard workout and knowing I showed up fully. I miss the rush and the clarity that comes after. For years, that’s been how I process stress, build confidence, and feel accomplished.

Yoga, which I’ve only recently been cleared to reintroduce, is good and i’m grateful for it. But it doesn’t give me the same energy or feelings of pride after. To be honest, I really haven’t found anything yet that does.

On top of that, I’m missing my first official race of the season. That one has been hard to swallow. Races mark time for me, a chance to show improvement from the previous year, and they give structure to my training. Missing it feels like watching something meaningful move forward without me. Running feels closer than it did, but it’s still out of reach.

That “almost” is emotionally exhausting.

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Why I’ve Been So Tired

Something I have been really struggling with is extreme fatigue. Which at times makes no sense because I am not doing much of anything!

However, this week I came across a post from The Injury Psychologist on Instagram that really helped me understand what’s been happening mentally. I’ll attach the link below, but here’s what stood out to me.

One slide said: “Recovery is a full-time mental job.”

It explained how injury places the brain in constant monitoring mode. Even when you’re physically resting, your mind is scanning:

• Is this pain normal?
• Am I doing enough?
• Am I pushing too much?
• Is this healing fast enough?
• Am I falling behind?

Another slide talked about how the brain struggles when the path forward isn’t clear. Injury disrupts rhythm especially as timelines shift and progress feels uneven. And the brain doesn’t like uncertainty (especially mine), so it fills the gaps by analyzing, questioning, and searching for reassurance. That constant background processing is draining.

There was also a slide that said: “The mind can recover its energy too.” It explained that as healing becomes clearer and trust in your body rebuilds, the mind doesn’t have to work as hard to monitor and protect you.

Reading that helped me reframe my fatigue. But if my brain is essentially on high alert all day—tracking pain in my tibia and knee, evaluating every sensation, questioning when I will be able to return to ‘normal’—that makes sense.

Recovery isn’t just physical. And I am realizing that even when my body is resting, my mind isn’t.

Instagram Post Here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVgq4_cimsi/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

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Challenges This Week

This week, staying positive has been harder.

There were a few days where I felt really low, flat, and unmotivated. Missing the version of myself that could go out and hammer a workout and feel strong.

Additionally, this week my summer soccer coach emailed asking about availability for the upcoming season, which starts in April, and I had to face the strong realization that realistically my body won’t be in peak form until at least midway through the season; even if I’m back to run-walks by then, there’s no way I could sustain the energy, effort, and strength required to play a full-out game, especially in the position I typically play, and that was another hard truth to sit with.

Missing my first race of the season amplified that. It forced me to sit with the reality that I’m not just “almost back,” but i’m still in it.

I’ve had to really work to not let that spiral into frustration.

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What I’m Working On

Two things have been grounding me this week:

1. Gratitude journaling.
Each day I’ve been writing down what I’m grateful for. Some days it’s big things. Some days it’s as simple as low pain or good sleep. It’s not about forcing positivity. It’s about widening my perspective.

2. Focusing on what I can control.
I can’t control the exact timeline of bone or tissue healing. But I can control:

• My nutrition
• My sleep
• My rehab consistency
• Listening carefully to my body

I’m also continuing to show up fully for the people I coach in the running community and the students I work with at Oak Bay High and Vic High. Even if I can’t physically demonstrate everything, I can model patience, self-awareness, and long-term thinking. If anything, this injury has reinforced the message I give them: health first. Always.

I’m also channeling energy into practicum prep. There’s something stabilizing about planning, learning, and focusing on the educator I’m becoming. Part of me has been reflecting on whether this injury is also asking me to strengthen the mental side of my performance identity before I’m ready to fully return physically.

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Lessons Learned

This week reminded me:

• Recovery is deeply psychological.
• Fatigue doesn’t mean I’m weak; it may mean my brain is working overtime.
• Progress doesn’t always feel exciting while you’re in it.
• Running being “close” can feel harder than it being far away.

Even on the lower days, conversations with my coach and other professionals helped. I’m learning how to fuel more intentionally. How to rest without guilt. How to separate my worth from my workouts. How to be patient.

Those are skills I’ll carry long after this injury has fully healed.

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Progress

Even though this week felt mentally tough, there is measurable progress:

• Pain reduced to a 2–4 most days
• Cleared for more advanced strength exercises
• Better understanding of mental fatigue
• More intentional focus on recovery practices

Running still feels close, but not here yet. Missing my first race hurts. I won’t pretend it doesn’t.

But I also know this: healing isn’t just about getting back to the start line. It’s about building something steadier underneath me.

This week wasn’t about proving anything physically. It was about learning how to carry the weight of recovery with a little more awareness and a little more patience.

What This Injury Has Taught Me So Far

11 weeks.

That number felt heavy. 11 weeks since my last run. 11 weeks of trying to make sense of pain that didn’t follow a clean, linear story. 11 weeks of progress, setbacks, hope, confusion, and a lot of patience I didn’t know I had.

This past stretch has been a rollercoaster, not just physically, but mentally. I hit a milestone I never wanted to hit: double digits in weeks away from running. And at the same time, I finally started getting some clearer answers.

The Update: What We Know Now

A couple of weeks ago, I got my MRI results back. The initial read showed no active stress fracture, which was both relieving and confusing. If there wasn’t a stress fracture, why was I still in pain?

My medical team felt the same uncertainty. The imaging didn’t fully explain what I was feeling. And then things flared again.

I had some pretty severe pain spikes with cross-training — enough that I had to take a full week off. That week felt like a massive step backwards. After being off running for so long, even cross-training had become my anchor. Letting that go, even temporarily, was really hard.

When I met with my sports doctor again, we re-looked at the MRI more closely. This time, we noticed fluid buildup around the pes anserine bursa, consistent with pes anserine bursitis. An ultrasound confirmed thickening in that area.

But that still didn’t fully explain the initial injury.

So I was referred to another sports medicine doctor for a second look. After reviewing everything his assessment was that I most likely had a cortical early-stage stress reaction that was on its way to becoming a stress fracture. These don’t always show up clearly on imaging, and may have healed by the time I got my imaging. He also mentioned the possibility of a periosteal reaction without marrow edema, which can be painful but subtle or invisible on scans.

The good news: There is no current stress fracture on MRI.

The honest reality: That doesn’t exclude that there may have been one earlier in the process.

So what likely happened? I didn’t just have one injury. I had two.

The initial bone stress injury required crutches and significant offloading. That prolonged crutch position and unloading likely triggered the secondary issue, pes anserine bursitis. In trying to protect the bone, I irritated the soft tissue. It’s been a complicated chain reaction.

For more context, check out this video below which does a great job explaining what Pes Anserine Bursitis is:

Where Things Stand Now

As of this week, I’m starting a structured loading plan with my new sports doc. We’re building a clear rehab progression, and from the sounds of it, a small run–walk protocol could be back on the table in about four weeks, cautiously and gradually.

The bursitis should hopefully settle within six to eight weeks as we progressively reload it. For the first time in a while, the plan feels grounded.

The Challenges

This season has stretched me in ways I didn’t expect.

1. The mental weight of uncertainty.

Not having a clean diagnosis for weeks was exhausting. Pain without clarity can mess with your head.

2. The flares.

Every time things seemed to calm down, a flare would spike and shake my confidence. Especially when cross-training, the one thing I felt like I still had, triggered pain.

3. Taking a week off everything.

That week off cross-training felt like starting over. It challenged my identity and my coping strategies.

4. The patience required.

Ten weeks without running forces you to sit with yourself in a different way.

Lessons I’m Learning

I’m still in it, but here’s what this stretch has taught me so far:

1. Imaging is helpful, but it’s not the whole story.

Scans don’t always capture early bone stress reactions. Clinical context matters.

2. Offloading has consequences too.

Protecting one structure can overload another. Rehab isn’t just about rest, it’s about smart, progressive loading.

3. Healing isn’t linear.

Flares don’t always mean failure. Sometimes they’re information.

4. Second opinions can be valuable.

Not because someone was “wrong,” but because complex injuries benefit from multiple lenses.

5. My identity is bigger than running.

This one is still a work in progress. But ten weeks has forced me to widen my perspective.

6. Progress can be quiet.

Sometimes progress looks like better understanding, not faster pace.

Video Reflection: The first 10 Weeks of Rehab

I’ve included a video below that summarizes the first ten weeks. The ER visits, the crutches, the imaging, the cross-training attempts, the flares, and the mindset shifts along the way.

This chapter has been humbling. But it’s also so important.

For now, the focus is simple:

• Load gradually.
• Respect the process.
• Build back stronger, not just physically, but mentally.

And hopefully, in a few weeks, take those first careful run–walk steps back.

The Middle Ground

Week 2 of rehab felt like stepping into the in-between. I’m no longer completely sidelined, but I’m also far from being back. There’s progress, which is exciting, but it comes with a new kind of patience. This week started to show me what the next stretch of this process might look like with small wins, slow rebuilding, and learning how to sit in the middle without rushing through it

Successes for the week
This week had some real momentum. I started aqua jogging, which felt like a big step mentally as much as physically. There’s something about being in motion again, even in the pool, that brought back a bit of the rhythm I’ve been missing. I also returned to some light strength training. Nothing dramatic, but enough to feel like I’m reconnecting with my body in a productive way.

One of the biggest wins: I walked three laps of the track without crutches. It might sound small, but it felt huge. Being on the track again, even just walking, was grounding. It reminded me that forward movement is happening, even if it looks different right now.

I also had my MRI this week. Nearly 40 minutes of loud, clanging noises while lying still is not exactly relaxing. They scanned both legs for comparison, which added time but should give a clearer picture. It was nerve-wracking going in, but I got through it and will have results this weekend. For now, I’m trying to stay neutral and trust the process.

If you have never had an MRI, here is a great video explaining how it all works!

Challenges for the week
The hardest part right now is this middle phase. I’m not fully out of commission anymore, which means I can do more, but I’m also not close to being back to normal training. That gray area is mentally tough. There’s enough progress to see what I’m missing, but not enough to return to it.

The reality of how long this rehab will likely take is starting to sink in. In the early days, everything felt acute and immediate. Now, it’s more about sustained patience. That’s a different challenge. There’s a temptation to measure where I am against where I was, and to want to speed things up. But that mindset isn’t helpful, and honestly, it’s what got me into trouble before.

I had a really helpful conversation with my coach this week. She reminded me that the goal isn’t to get back to where I was, because where I was wasn’t sustainable. The goal is to come back healthier, stronger, and with better habits. It was a grounding reminder that this isn’t just about returning; it’s about rebuilding in a smarter way.

Lessons learned for the week
Progress doesn’t always feel like progress. Sometimes it just feels slow. But slow is still forward.

This week taught me that the middle phase requires a different kind of discipline, not the push-hard, grind-through type, but the steady, patient kind. The kind where you respect the timeline, trust the professionals around you, and focus on the small things you can do well.

I’m also learning to reframe what “better” means. Better doesn’t mean getting back to old training numbers as quickly as possible. It means building a version of myself that can handle the load in a healthier way long term. That’s a bigger goal, and one that’s worth taking the time for.

For now, I’m holding onto the wins: movement in the pool, a bit of strength work, three laps around the track, and another week closer to normalcy.

Episode 1: Welcome to my inquiry project!

I have chosen to focus on navigating life during injury recovery. At first I thought this might be a good way to document my physical healing, but I am quickly realizing that in reality, it will be about a lot more than that. This injury has affected how I move, think, show up in life, and how I see myself.

Recovery has forced me to slow down in ways I did not choose. It has disrupted routines I relied on and brought up patterns in my relationship with training, food, productivity, and control that I had not really looked at before. Through this project, I want to take the time to learn from what I am going through instead of rushing to get back to normal. By documenting this process, I hope to better understand how injury impacts identity and mental health, and what it actually means to heal in a way that is supportive and sustainable.

My final goal is to create a video summarizing my journey from start to finish to share with my community!

The Hard Truth About my Injury

Running has been a central part of my life for the last few years. It is how I de-stress, how I challenge myself, and is a huge part of my life. It gives my days structure and my mind clarity.

Just over a year ago, I started to feel unbalanced in my life. Searching for direction, I decided I would put all my energy into becoming a better runner. Over time, that focus shifted into something unhealthy. I trained harder and fuelled less, convinced that pushing more and making myself smaller would lead to better results. And at first, I did see progress…until it started to spiral out of control.

The last year was a rollercoaster. Yes, I had some big achievements in running that I was proud of, but those achievements existed alongside significant lows that gradually began to affect every aspect of my life, including my running.

Over time, months of chronic under-fuelling and overtraining began to take a toll, and I ended up in RED-S, leaving my body without enough energy to support both training and basic function. That imbalance ultimately led to the injury that has me sidelined now.

Healing Up Until This Point

Healing so far has been confusing, exhausting, and anything but straightforward. I am 7 weeks in and in that time I have had multiple trips to the emergency room, each time hoping for clarity and each time leaving with more uncertainty. I received conflicting answers from different professionals and no clear diagnosis.

I went from crutches alone to then being given an air cast to go with the crutches. Initially, I was told to be non weight bearing for six to eight weeks. Then I was told maybe I should start testing it earlier. Recently, after a few intense pain flairs, it was suggested that the boot itself might be contributing to worsening symptoms and I should not use it anymore. I have been caught in an ongoing cycle of movement and no movement, never fully sure which is helping and which is hurting.

I have been given a cortisone injection, nerve medication, and multiple types of anti inflammatory medication. I have been attending physiotherapy, including laser treatment. I have had an x ray and a CT scan, but was told the CT scan was done too early in the injury to show potential bone damage. However, I was just accepted into a study being done by the Canadian Sport Institute at PISE where they are looking at athletes dealing with suspected Bone Stress Injuries and am getting a fast-tracked MRI next Thursday!

However, at this point, there is still no clear diagnosis. It could be a stress fracture, a ligament or tendon injury, or a combination of both. The pain flares unpredictably, sometimes without warning. At its worst, the intensity has brought me to tears. Not just from the pain itself, but from the frustration and helplessness that comes with not knowing what is wrong.

All of this has made navigating school and life incredibly difficult. I have struggled to attend classes consistently, to work, to teach, and to coach. Losing the ability to do the things that normally give structure and meaning to my days has been one of the hardest parts of this experience.

Lessons I Have Learned So Far

However, as challenging as this has all been, this injury has forced me to confront some uncomfortable truths. Each week I plan to update this list for lessons I have learned. This week’s lessons have been simmering over the last few weeks, but are perhaps the most important ones:

• Short term success built on depletion comes at a high cost.
• Smaller does not equal faster or stronger.
• Constantly pushing without adequate rest and fuel is not sustainable.
• And above all, when you lose the joy, you lose the point.

These lessons have been hard earned, but I am learning that strength is not always about pushing through, and that listening to my body is not weakness. It is necessary.

Weekly Progress

Each week I want to include some of the highs of this journey as well as any progress I feel like I have made.

This week brought two small but meaningful steps forward. I was able to go “swimming” for the first time since the injury, and I no longer need to wear the walking boot!

Swimming was not full laps or anything, but I was able to explore how my body felt in the water, which was amazing! It allowed me to reconnect with my body in a way that felt supportive instead of demanding. Losing the boot also felt symbolic, even though I know recovery is far from over, it feels like I am getting a bit of my freedom back.

These moments reminded me that progress does not have to be dramatic to matter.

Weekly Challenge

I also want to be honest about the realities of healing from a major injury. This week was unexpectedly hard. The lack of clear answers continues to trigger spiralling thoughts, especially during pain flares. One flare was intense enough that I had to leave school early again, which brought up a mix of frustration, fear, and helplessness. Each setback seems to carry its own emotional weight, not just physical pain. I would be lying if I said my mental health was sunshine and rainbows right now, but I am starting to have more good days than bad as time goes on.

Another thing I am learning is that I cannot do this alone. This week, I reached out to my coach when I felt overwhelmed. Having someone talk me down, remind me that pain flares do not equal failure, and help me zoom out made a huge difference. The advice was simple but grounding, to focus on what I can control, to take things one step at a time, and to trust that healing is still happening even when it does not feel like it.

I also found this great video on the mental side of injury recovery, including some mental tools for resilience. While I am not a varsity athlete, my sport is still a huge part of my life. I find watching videos like this, and others I have found, helps me feel less alone in what I am experiencing, realizing the fears, sadness, and anxiety is universal.

What Is Next

Thank you for tuning in for my first Blog post! In the next post, I will reflect on my experience getting an MRI and hopefully have some answers! I will also share what it feels like to move one step closer to clarity while still living inside uncertainty of timeline.

For now, this post marks the beginning of this inquiry. Healing is ongoing, imperfect, and slow, just like the learning.