Oops, I did it again!

Yes, I am quoting a Britney Spears song! But, not about breaking hearts, I broke my promise to myself to stop and investigate or adjust when something was not right.

I was walking (again), this time on the treadmill. (see my blog Sand in my shoe for context.)  I thought I was breaking in a new pair of shoes but they were the ones doing the breaking, of the skin on my ankle!  After 10 minutes I noticed that I could feel a slight burn on my right ankle and told myself that it would not be bad, that I only had 20 more minutes to go, that stopping to restart would offset my rhythm … sigh.

When I finally stopped, including the cool down walk, and took off the shoes, the first thing I noticed was the smear of blood on the back of the shoe.  I then looked at my heel and surely enough, the skin was gone.  I cleaned it up, bandaged it, then cleaned my shoe.

Why did I ignore the pain signal?  Why did I think that the shorter walk would do no harm?  Why did I think that this time would be different because the setting was different?  Because, I hadn’t learnt the lesson!  Just because I am doing something healthy/for a good reason doesn’t mean I should ignore red flags and hope for the best!

And the irony is that as I was walking, adjusting my gait to lessen the friction, I kept telling myself to stop, to check, that my stride could easily be regained.

For me the silver lining is this, even though I repeated a behaviour, I was aware and knew I could make a different choice.  This means that next time I should be able to stop myself before the injury takes place.