It also hurt when I fell from heaven.
I got up this morning at 6 a.m., made breakfast – eggs, sausage & beans – and went to the races. My wife and I ran the Trolley Run, one of our favorite runs in Kansas City. It’s a 4 mile jaunt that never loops back. Usually we take the shuttles from the finish to the start, but we were scheduled to run 14 miles today, so we parked the car at the start of the race, ran to the finish, grabbed some water and a few snacks, turned around and headed back.
The run went pretty well, we beat our old time by about 30 seconds, which is great, considering we both took most of last year off from running. When we got back to the car, we unloaded our race bibs, slathered on some sunscreen, grabbed the water bottle and turned around to run the last six miles. Everything was going great until around the 9.5 mile mark, when we started to sprint across a street to avoid an oncoming car. Something in my foot gave, and I started to feel a sharp pain inside my foot.
This wasn’t a huge surprise, my left foot has been hurting all week. I did some research online and determined it was either tendinitis – a relatively simple problem, or it was a stress fracture – a relatively huge problem. I’m starting to think it’s the latter.
With only five more miles to go I favored my right foot and ran on the outside of my left foot. This worked ok, but it put an incredible stress on my knees. We finished the run, and I immediately put some ice on it, and so far it hasn’t hurt, but I’m pretty worried about it. I plan to wait until my next run on Tuesday to see if there’s any more pain, but I might push that run to later in the week, or do it on a bike instead.
I’m really hoping this thing heals, or isn’t as serious as I’m afraid it might be. Last week, the wife and I decided to run a marathon later this year. Yesterday, we decided to run a 100 mile ultra-marathon next year. Someone needs to tell my foot to fix itself, because I’ve got some running to do!
The other weird thing about today is my wife and I are both incredibly tired. We’re not quite sure why, we’ve both run this distance before, albeit, not for about two or three years, but we’ve run 13 miles a few times since then and this is only one more mile. We’re both a bit nauseous, and I feel like it takes about 10x as much effort to breathe.
It really sucks to burn yourself out on a training run, there’s no glory, only pain. Then again, I guess that can be said about most races as well. At least we had a beautiful spring morning to enjoy for our two hour foot powered tour of Kansas City.
We’ve spent the last few hours recuperating on the couch, and this evening we’re going to a beer dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. So I predict we’ll be feeling pretty relaxed by the end of the day, and we’ll also sleep like the dead tonight, which is exactly what I need.
Blood, Sweat & Beer 