Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Matchy matchy

I'm consistently about 24 hours behind. 
Last night I went to the work apartment gym to throw out 3 really easy miles.  My outfit looked FANTASTIC in the setting sun.

I love the colors.  


Got there and realized that I had dragged my toothpicks to work out with me. I might as well, since my braces come off in A MONTH and then I won't need them as heavily as I do now.  I found that I can rid my teeth of food AND run easy.  The one thing I can't do is run easily on my damn foot!  It really hurt.  More then usual.  Not super surprised since I pushed myself on the race and everything took a little bit of punishment.  

So today I read lots of stuff on plantar fasciitis and heel drop and exercises, etc.  I ordered another pair of shoes, the Saucony Hurricane 14's.
She's a beauty!!
They have a little more heel drop, only 8 mm and a little more support.  I'll use them for my longer runs and hopefully have them broken in by Ragnar.  I have a race this Saturday where I run leg 1 of the Salt Lake Half Marathon Relay.  It's only about 4 miles but it is straight up hill.  I've talked about running East Canyon before and so I'm not too nervous.  I have run it twice and I feel pretty good about it.

Not to good about my foot.  I've been taking ibuprofen regularly today and icing it, elevating it about 3 times.  I will start massaging tomorrow very gently and hopefully will be able to run Saturday without more problems and damage.

THEORY
Ruh. Roh.  Now I've gone on to write books about what is happening to my foot!  Actually, it's about all I think about.  Running, my foot, how to improve, how to get faster, etc.  I'm certain that nobody does that but me... .  But here goes:

After my last race my foot hurt REALLY bad right on the inside of my heel.  More then plantar fasciitis bad, but almost like a bruise.  For the first 24 hours after the race I was sure that I was going to go back to the podiatrist and get an x-ray to make sure I didn't have a broken heel bone or stress fracture.  Monday I woke up and when I would squeeze the sides of my heel it didn't hurt, so I decided to hold off on going back for a bit.  I had a friend (don't all "know it all stories" start like that?) who broke her heel bone and the way she was able to tell was squeezing the sides.  Now it is one of my "go to" diagnostic tools.  I am sure I am every doctors nightmare.  

One thing that kept nagging me was the extra cork the podiatrist put on my custom insert to build it up and apparently to help ease the pain of this episode of PF.  He was a little rushed when he did it and my heel hurt RIGHT where he added it. Not to mention that my heel has not made any progress despite my ever loving care.  

Blue post-it note hiding the name of my doctor.  I don't want anyone to think he is a bad doctor.  Back to the cork:  So here it is.  This is after I filed it down a little a couple of nights ago. Today I went to Home Depot and bought a decent file and plan to even it out much more and see if that will help.  I will also continue the icing and ibuprofen.  I'll even get the stretching exercises done a couple of times a day.  I won't run again until my race on Saturday though.

One thing I did learn after all my reading today was, going from my Asics shoe right into a 3mm drop shoe was probably part of the problem.  Between that and the less support of the Mirage and it was bound to cause a problem.  I don't think that I have to inherently wear stability shoes forever, but I need to go slow and strengthen my feet.  I know there is a lot of bare-foot runner lovers out there, or minimalist shoe lovers, but right now it's not my time.  Watching me run is painful to even me.  I'm constantly working on form, cadence and strike.  I thought I was looking better, but you know race photo's are never great.
Check out my foot!  I run pigeon toed.  Classic. This is me giving the international peace in running sign and I knew I was getting my picture taken and I still look dorky! My shoes look way too big for me.  Four of my toenails can attest that they are not.
Kinda reminds me of my Thelma and Louise Half marathon photo.

The compression socks are awesome, I'm glad I wear them now.  

That is my story and I'm sticking to it.  Now I am going to listen to more of the book, "Born to run" and feel even worse about my feet. Generations of non-runners and shoes have genetically altered my natural abilities.  Yeah, that's it.



Blog on.............



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