Blindsided

Well, I certainly didn’t see this coming. After getting to a point where I was completely pain free walking around, I was sure I would be able to make a return to running sometime this week. I could still feel a twinge or two when I did certain things early in the week, but by Wednesday, I was good to go. I had planned on running that evening, but I had a crazy day at work and just couldn’t get out to save my life. It was one thing after another late in the day to the point where I decided maybe somebody was trying to tell me something and took it as a sign that I should wait another day. Yesterday afternoon actually got a little crazy too, and I had the same thought, but I managed to do a little better getting away and headed to Salem to see what I could do.

After a brief chat with David Angell, I walked into the Bast Center to leave my bag, and on the way in actually felt my foot a couple times. Since I hadn’t been noticing it at all, I thought that was kind of weird, so I took my shoe off and made sure it wasn’t laced up too tight or whatever. That seemed to help, so I figured I would start out and bail if I had much in the way of any pain. Well, I only made it about ten steps, and as luck would have it, I stepped on a gravel that hit right where I’ve been having all the pain. It sort of caused me to roll my ankle and immediately disabled me to the point where I almost fell. Needless to say, the run was over before it even got started. Guess I should have paid more attention to those signs.

Now that’s bad enough in and of itself, but it gets worse. At first I figured I’d just aggravated it and within a few minutes it would be back to feeling like it had and I would just need to wait a few more days before trying to run again. However, it was way worse than that. It started to throb and it was all I could do to walk out of there. Same story the rest of the night and same story this morning. I’m in a significant amount of pain, maybe even what you would call an immense amount of pain. I can’t really put any weight or pressure at all on the outside of my foot, and it feels like my arch is wanting to cramp at all times. Not good. Believe it or not, this is actually the worst it’s been yet, so I managed to undo two weeks of healing in a period of about 10 seconds.

Anyway, I made an online appointment with a podiatrist last night hoping they could see me today, and fortunately I got a call early this morning saying they could. I have an appointment at 3:10PM. I’m sure they’ll take an x-ray and I’m expecting the worst based on the way it’s feeling. I’ll try to get up a post after the visit regarding what I find out. Regardless, it looks like my summer racing plans are done and at this point I don’t even really care. I just want to be able to walk normally. After that I can start making some decisions about where to go from here, but the reality is I haven’t been able to stay healthy or run anywhere near my potential for years now, and it only seems to be getting worse. The last year and a half has been nothing but one injury after another to the point where I can’t even string ten weeks together anymore. Maybe it’s time to say enough is enough and walk (or limp, in my case) away.