How's the foot?

Sorry my blog's been a bit of a snore-fest lately.  Feel free to navigate away and come back in a few weeks.  I won't mind.  

Anyway, people have been asking me how my foot is holding up.  It doesn't (and never did) hurt to ride on it, so I've been back on the bike recently.  However, my training time has basically be

en cut in half, which I'm sure some of you trolls are happy about.  (And of course by trolls I mean people who care about my wellbeing more than I sometimes seem to).  I have been avoiding walking and standing on it at all costs, and the pain seems mostly gone.  

Mostly.

I can still feel the ache sometimes, but at least I can walk to the train in the morning without pain.  It feels like it is going away.  The big question is:

¿Am I going to run the Hartford Marathon on Saturday?

Good question.  I haven't actually tried to run on it yet, so I guess we won't know until this weekend.  Unless it hurts to run a block or two on Friday, we're going to give it a shot.  Here is the plan:

Step 1: Buy new shoes

It has been pointed out to me that suddenly I have flat feet.  For someone who always had high arches, this is perplexing.  I will go to my local running geek store and have them do their thing to pick the correct shoes for me on penalty of death.

Step 1.5: Bite any smartass who tells me not to run a marathon in new shoes

I know that, Mr. Smartypants!  But wh

en it is between getting blisters in new shoes, or running a marathon on the shoes that hurt me and have kept me from running for a week or more, I'd rather get the blisters thank you very much.  And anyway, I'm tough.  I can handle it.  I think popping blisters is pretty much the most fun that any one person can have.  So why don't you have a big glass of shut the hell up juice!  (Again, thank you for caring, my dear trolls).  

Step 2: Drive down to Hartford and pick up race packet

No matter what I'm going down to Hartford.  Marathon or no marathon, I would not miss the chance to hang out with hetero life partner, Angry, marathon buddy, Cranky, and fellow tri-geek, Iron Bob, nor would I miss the chance to pick up freebies at the expo!

Step 3: Show up at starting line of marathon, begin running

If all goes well, I plan on running this damned marathon.  If my foot hurts, I plan on continuing to run this stupid marathon.  If my foot hurts like I'm going to have to take a week or two off of running to let it heal, I will continue to run this stupid marathon. Because taking 1-2 weeks off after a stupid marathon is a good idea anyway.  If it starts to hurt like "oh fuck, I'm going to have to see a doctor" or it is slowing me down considerably leading to a 5-hour marathon (aka waste of time), I will sit down at the side of the road and demand to be taken home.

Satisfied, trolls?  No, really, you're the lovable kind of troll, I swear.  You know, the kind with crazy hair that walks around naked.  

But don't you hate admitting you're injured?  Don't you hate it when people are like, "Resting is when you get stronger", or "injury is just your body's way of telling you to rest", or "you shouldn't run a marathon on an injured foot", or "running is bad for you", or "I told you so", or "being a vegetarian is bad for you", or "be patient", or "you should put money in a savings account each month", or "can you PLEASE put away your laundry so that the kitten doesn't pee on it again", or "can you please edit Grade K theme three", or "no"...  Yeah, I hate it when people tell me that stuff too.  

RICE makes you fat

Things are not going well in Claire country. They are not going well at all. I'm stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare where my driver's license has been revoked. It's a long, long, frustrating story and basically boils down to a policy that the DMV has that they don't properly notify you of payments due. Let's just leave it at that. If I tell you the story I might cry again and that won't help matters any. The point is, it's been upsetting me.

On top of that, horror of horrors, I'm injured. It seems incredible, after all the shit I've put my body through over the past year that what put me over the edge was a 3-mile easy run. Monday I was running along at about 10-minute mile pace just thinking about life, flowers, butterflies, stars, puppies... when I started to get a bit of an ache in my left foot. It wasn't too bad, and things ache all the time only to feel fine the next day, so I finished my run (hey, I had to get home, didn't I?) not too worried about it. I ran some cold water in the tub and soaked my feet for a few minutes, and then forgot about it.

The next day it didn't hurt in the morning, and I forgot about it. I forgot about it on the walk to work. I forgot about it while at work. Then I remembered about it on the walk home from the train when it started to ache a little bit. But I'd just found out about my driver's license, and I really, really, really needed to run and I needed to run HARD. And anyway, if I were injured, I would get some warning before I really fucked it up, and I could back off. So I put on a different pair of shoes and started running. I was doing half-mile repeats up a slight hill, and while I was running fast the foot didn't hurt, but running slow back down it ached like hell. So it's not running FAST that fucked me up, it's running SLOW. What the fuck?! I hoped it would go away as I warmed up, but instead it got worse with time: it was fine on the way up, but killed on the recovery run back down. So after three repeats I turned around and hobbled home. I paid special attention to exactly where it hurt, and where the pain radiated through so that I could look it up when I got home.

Immediately I sat down at the computer and searched "anatomy of the foot" and found what seemed to be the culprit: the Peroneus Brevis tendon, a tendon that goes from the lateral head of your gastrocnemius (calf muscle), under the bump on the outside of your ankle, and tucks under your foot to insert at your fifth metatarsal (the bone mid-foot behind your pinky toe). The alternative is a stress fracture, but I do not have a stress fracture because there is no cure for that other than total rest for 6 weeks, which probably means crutches.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck! I'm supposed to be running the Hartford Marathon next weekend! I'm supposed to be running all this fall and finally becoming a fast runner! I'm not supposed to be injured.

If I get an overuse injury, shouldn't it be in one of the big muscles or joints? Not the tiny little peroneus brevis tendon that is responsible for "plantar flexion and eversion" (curling your foot and rolling it outwards). I do neither of these in road running. Sure, I turn my ankle all the time when I'm running on trails, but I haven't run on trails since last Wednesday. It certainly didn't hurt then. Come to think of it, if this were an overuse injury, why wouldn't it start to hurt when I WAS on a trail with my ankles rolling all over the place??? If I'm going to be taken down, I want it to be something dramatic, not the inflammation of some tendon no one's ever heard of. I feel I'm entitled to something really badass that includes exclamation points at the end, like Exploding Gluteus Syndrome!!! You know, something that involves sparks and maybe a bang, or at least a pop or a crack.

But no.

I have a pretty good idea of what caused it, the same thing that causes most sports injuries: overuse. I haven't bought new shoes in a long time. In fact, one of my pairs of shoes is over a year old (although they haven't been in the rotation for much of that time).

On top of that was my decision to run more in order to run faster. I figured I'd train like a runner, running every day with easy 3-mile runs on the "off days" instead of bike rides. So I ran Saturday and Sunday, Monday I ran easy and it started to hurt, and Tuesday it got worse. What's really frustrating, though, is that I broke none of the 3 commandments of running: I didn't go too far (it was a short run that killed me), too fast (it was slow running that did me in), or too soon! I have done similar running volume and similar intensity many times before with no ill effect. And too soon? Come on! Certainly I have enough of a running base in me to be able to handle an easy 3-mile run!

There's no use in seeing a doctor for now (although I finally have health insurance again!!! yippee!), since what he is almost certainly going to do is tell me to RICE it: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation until it gets better. I don't need to pay a copay and lose several hours of work to hear that. And anyway, doctors hate distance runners. They're worse than fat people. They can't WAIT to tell you that running is "bad for you".

I'm doing everything I should, staying off my feet, icing them, taking Advil (right, Judi?). But I am grouchy. I'm back in that place where I can't drag myself out of bed in the morning to go to the gym. I'm bringing healthy lunches, but going out to buy pizza and cookies instead. I'm eating all kinds of high GI foods, processed foods, and crap I would never normally eat. I'm getting fat.

Which brings me to another point: Rest. I hate rest. It makes me grouchy, depressed, and frantic. I know you need rest, but I prefer to take the "active recovery" option, the one where I sit in the back of the lane and just swim easy, or where I ride my bike easy with slower cyclists and enjoy the ride. Complete and total rest has dire implications for me. What if I get fat? What if I lose my fitness? What if next year I don't have the drive to get in as good shape as I am this year??? I mean, if you're just going to sit around on the couch, you might as well do so with drink in hand.

I know that you need to take time off, and also work rest into macrocycles with the off-season and so on. Rationally, I know this. This is what I would tell anyone else: that they need to take time off to rest. But deep down in the core of my being, I think it's a bit blown out of proportion (read more about it here). You need to let your fitness dip, sure, but get out of shape? Sit on the couch until I'm back to running 10-minute miles? Get fat? Sometimes I think I'd rather get my legs chopped off and continue training than be subject to that.