Time to move on
Last month I finally decided to try my foot with running again and it was disastrous. Yes, I was a little stir-crazy and I charged out the gates with 32 miles in the books by the end of week ONE (don’t even ask about the pace as you will surely call me stupid). That was a very short week let me tell you, because I could barely finish my last run that week due to a very familiar pain in the exact same spot I had incurred the fracture (notice I use the word ‘incurred’). Days following that last run I was limping and felt hopeless. I felt as everyday passed, my running goals were passing by and that really got me down. It’s no secret I like to exaggerate everything in life (including running goals) so I spewed out nonsense about not running for the rest of the year to make sure I was healthy. That spew out of my mouth quickly became something I wish I never said because I am not a doctor and if I could run sooner than that, I would want to. I ended up taking an additional month off, bringing me to today with 20 weeks off since my injury. Once I finally had enough guts to see my doctor, I had a good feeling everything would be OK. When I felt the pain last month I avoided seeing him because I was scared to find out what COULD be wrong – it was one thing for me to say I WANTED to take the rest of the year off, but to actually hear it from the doctor is another thing.
Like I said, I had a feeling everything would be OK when I met Dr. Weissman today since I had already integrated some swimming, biking and spinning into my workout regime that did include a LITTLE bit of running – like to the gym and back (big deal) without any problems. When the doc brought the x-ray film to the light, it was so obvious that the fracture was healed; in fact, we could barely tell where the fracture was before which was GREAT news. We parted ways after he convinced me to continue wearing my running orthotics to prevent my plantar fasciitis and IT band issues from returning. We are looking into other “softer” orthotic options since I am not comfortable putting anything stiff/firm under my foot after this injury. Wait? I just said prevent plantar fasciitis from returning – thank goodness, it was hell dealing with those issues before and I don’t miss them at all.
I guess the question is what do I do now? My answer is that I have no cluebut I am not running a marathon anytime soon – LA Marathon for sure, but that is in March and I don’t need to rush into since I have plenty of time. I do want to run Boston because that is for me a once-in-a-lifetime experience plus I probably won’t ever run “poop out” hill again at Mt. Sac, I’d like to try my luck at “heartbreak” hill. I am of course going to transfer my NY marathon entry to next year too since that was way harder to qualify for than Boston (3:23 vs. 3:40) and I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE New York. I’d say these are tentative races though because my body is in charge of which races I will run and when.