Success Story

Today’s Runners World Brief Chat is with Canadian distance runner Reid Coolaset, the guy who I e-mailed back and forth with a few times a couple weeks ago regarding my foot. He actually mentions his foot fracture about halfway through the interview, and I guess I can take some encouragement from the fact that he is now running up to 150 miles a week and ran two marathons last year, which is the same year he started out with the Jones Fracture and couldn’t even run until February. He was out basically three months with his fracture and when he started back it was by running just one kilometer. He said it took him about a month to get to the point where he was running 6 miles at a time, and since that would have made it early March and the 2009 Ottawa Marathon where he debuted with a 2:17 was on May 24th, he obviously progressed well from there.

In any event, I just thought I would post the link to his interview since he helped me out with some good advice and has also given me some hope with how successful he's been since the injury. As for my own personal progress, things still seem to be going well. I’m doing a limited amount of walking around now and everything appears to be fine, no pain and no swelling. I’m still walking very gingerly for the time being, but I’m gradually working my way towards a more normal gait where I come up on my toes. I’m starting to get really anxious to do more, but I’m going to hold myself back at least until I get a new set of x-rays on July 30th.

At this point, my goal is to be at a point where I can walk normally with no pain or negative after effects when I go see the doc at the end of the month. From there, I hope I can actually start walking for exercise in early August and maybe even running a couple weeks after that, since at that point it will have been a little over 3 months since the injury occurred. It will all depend on how I feel though as well as what the x-rays look like and the doc (or docs if I’m forced to go for a second opinion) say. I do know this much. This is going to be a LONG battle back. When I talked to Reid Coolaset, he said his main problem in returning to running was ankle and lower leg weakness, and I’m already noticing that just with the limited amount of walking I’m doing. That’s why I figure I’m literally going to have to walk before I run, then be very patient when I am able to start running again. Still, after these past 10 weeks, it's a process I very much look forward to!