I have to admit, it’s been quite a struggle getting myself into gear to get to ballet class the past few weeks. I had plans to go both last Thursday and Friday, but I couldn’t manage to get myself up off my butt and into the ballet studio. I did finally get there on Saturday, although it was no easy feat yanking myself out of bed in the morning.
My legs have done really well post stress fracture, but they’ve been really sore. Last week was especially tough. I pushed myself a bit too hard on a run on Tuesday (I started off too fast for someone who hasn’t run much) and my legs have been pretty whiny since. They survived Saturday morning’s ballet class and pre-pointe class (in slippers) no problem, other than the fact they felt weak and quite sore. My ballet teacher recommended more ballet classes (which is the plan, I just need to motivate myself) and not as much running.
I’ve always struggled to find a good balance between running and ballet. Often, weeks will go by where I’m completely gung-ho about ballet and then I’ll be all about one the next month. If I had a dollar for every time someone recommended I quit one or the other because of my injuries, I’d be rich.
I toyed with the idea of giving up running completely this weekend, since I wanted to blame it for all my injuries and pain. Then someone on Twitter gave me a little advice.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have realized that I’ve tweeted a lot of my older posts lately. I’ve got a handy little WordPress plugin that does it automatically for me. Over the weekend, it tweeted my “Should dancers run?” post and one of my fellow adult ballerinas tweeted that she does (and I know more of you do, too).
We chatted for a little about the topic and she reminded me to do what makes ME happy, not anyone else.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
Take ballet when it makes me happy (which is a lot of the time) and run when that makes me happy. And of course, take care of my body and listen to it when it tells me I shouldn’t be doing either.
Do what makes YOU happy.
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