A minor disruption

So far this week, the running has gone well.  Four miles on Monday, two miles on Tuesday, and three miles on Wednesday.  No achilles pain, and my speed is increasing without any real effort on my part.  I ran on the treadmill on Wednesday and was thrilled that my warm-up speed is now what my fastest speed was two weeks ago.  It's all looking promising.

Or rather, it was.  Wednesday afternoon found me at Mr Consultant's dermatology clinic having a mole removed from my leg.  Two of the GPs at my local practice had disagreed about whether the mole was of concern and had sent me to Mr Consultant for a third opinion.  He dithered as well, but eventually decided that we should err on the side of caution.  One of the nurses held my hand while Mr Consultant injected the local anaesthetic (I was being very brave and the nurse was being very kind), which I barely felt at all.

The whole procedure took about 25 minutes, and somehow we ended up chatting about my internet dating experiences.  I can only hope that the soundproofing between the clinic rooms was heavy-duty, because I don't know what the other patients would have made of the party atmosphere coming from our room.  At one point, Mr Consultant snorted so hard with laughter at one of my stories (about the guy that I had met once and rejected - nicely, of course - who then drunkenly phoned me a couple of weeks later to say that it was his birthday and he would like me to be his birthday present to himself) that he ended up earthing the cauterising needle on himself.  A shocking experience for him, but for me as well, because he had his arm resting on my knee at the time so that the current ran through his arm and out my knee.  He managed to calm himself before starting the stitching.

So now I have six stitches in my leg and was told, 'No running until they come out.'  But that's in a fortnight.  No running for 14 days???  That's completely unacceptable, so I did what any right-thinking runner would do - I had a good look online to find advice that said what I wanted to hear.  I googled 'running with stitches in my leg', got 1,666,000 hits, and on the first page found what I needed.

Basically, the consensus seems to be that if it doesn't hurt, it's okay to run.  And someone did warn that if you have stitches in your inner thigh and your thighs rub together when you run, you might want to think twice about running.  Fortunately, as someone whose inner thighs interact a bit more during a run than I would like, my stitches are in a place where they don't touch any other part of my body and where they don't actually have to flex very much (as they might if they were on my quad or my knee, for example). 

Because I am a grown-up person, and not a stroppy adolescent who only does what she wants to do, I will compromise on this.  Today was a rest day anyway.  I had planned to run 7 miles on Friday and 2 miles on Saturday, but I will now rest on Friday as well.  I'll move the long run to Saturday or Sunday, depending on how my leg is feeling, and will miss out the 2-miler.  And yes, I promise promise promise that if my leg hurts when I run, I will stop.  Really.  I will.