Raworth on the Run: 'Why I'm cramming in the calf raises'
The recovery from my broken ankle starts with my toes. My physio, Sue Donnelly, tells me to sit on the floor and orders me to lift my little toe up all on its own. I can’t. It lies there like a tiny, paralysed limb. Weird to see. I stare at it, willing it to move. Nothing happens. We try my big toe next, part of my body I have never studied this hard before. The more I look at it, the more I think of a tortoise head poking out of its shell. Sue, smiley and gorgeous and Irish, tells me to keep my big toe firmly on the floor and lift all the others up one after the other, a kind of toe wave. Not bad on my good foot, almost impossible on my recently broken one. And my little toe still won’t move. ‘Why am I having to do this?’ I moan. ‘What’s this to do with running?!’ ‘It’s all about improving your intrinsic foot control and strength,’ she says encouragingly, not allowing me to stop. ‘The nature of your ankle fracture means that foot control is essential to manage the load as you increase it again. This is about preventing future injuries.’ She sends me off with my homework. Toe control practice. Calf raises too. Lots of them every day.
I loathe calf raises. This is what I tell Olympian turned BBC star commentator Steve Cram when I see him days later in the stadium at the Paris Olympics. We are in the commentary box on the last night of the athletics and he asks how my return to running is going. ‘There’s still no running,’ I tell him gloomily, ‘it’s all about my toes and horrible calf raises right now.’ His face lights up. ‘Calf raises! At my peak I was doing 500 on each leg every night before bed.’ I stare at him. 500! I can only do 12 on my bad leg, 27 on my good leg right now. ‘They are SO boring,’ I say. Steve laughs. ‘Have you tried going for a 20-mile run?’ Calf raises are not just important for runners, they are also very accessible, he tells me, though they have to be done properly. ‘A good technique is basically not wobbling around, you go straight up and down and you’re getting right up on your toes, really engaging your calf. For runners, the lower leg is an area of weakness for a lot of people. Doing the running just isn’t enough. Calf raises are replicating a part of your stride. You’re engaging ligaments, muscles, bones. It can help alleviate every runner’s problems from plantar to achilles tendonitis or things like shin splints and stop you getting injured. When I started, I couldn’t do many at all. I used to do three sets of 10 or 15 on each leg. You just build up slowly.’
Limbering up on the track below us in the stadium is Team GB’s Georgia Bell. She’s in the form of her life and about to race in the 1500 metre Olympic final. Is she doing hundreds of calf raises too, I wonder. Days after she wins her bronze medal in that race, I ask her. She is definitely not on the Steve Cram level. But they are important, she says. ‘I do them when I’m brushing my teeth and I do weighted ones in the gym once a week. It’s quite important now to stop achilles injuries as the new super shoes get you up on your toes so your calves have to be strong to stop injuries.’ Paris is where I realise I can no longer avoid boring calf raises. The slow crawl back to fitness is underway. I need to be able to do at least 30 on each leg before I can run more than 5km again, says my physio, Sue. Rise up, slowly down, up, down….I’m on my way.
You Might Also Like
