When I ran the 14-something miles home via the trail on Valentine’s Day, I banged my right foot against a rock pretty good. I didn’t think anything much of it at the time as something always hurts or ends up hurting on 80% of my runs, especially on trails. I kept to my training plan for the remainder of that week and into the weekend. I ran 10 miles on Saturday and almost 20 miles on Sunday. My foot was hurting pretty good Sunday evening and into the next week. It hurt enough that I knew I shouldn’t run on it. So I listened to my body and took the week off.
Saturday rolled around, it was a nice day, so I decided to hit the trails and go on a little 10k run. A mile in I decided I’d go a little further out on the trail to parts that I hadn’t explored yet. I wound up getting lost and hitting some portions that were pretty technical. By the time I’d gotten back to the house, I wound up running nearly 12 miles. I felt some discomfort in my foot throughout the run, but I didn’t think I was actually injured.
On Sunday I woke up at 5:30 to go run with some friends on the trail downtown. When my foot hit the ground while getting out of bed, I knew I wasn’t going to do any running that day. I hobbled to the bathroom and the pain shot through my foot on every step.
The pain was enough that I knew I probably needed to see the doctor. I couldn’t get an appointment with my general practitioner, so I scheduled an appointment with the local sports medicine clinic. They X-rayed my foot, the doctor asked me all the questions and did some motion and pressure tests on my foot. The X-rays indicated no fractures (although I do have gnarly foot bones), which was good. That’s what I wanting to find out. If something was broken, I wasn’t going to try to push through a run and make things a lot worse. I opted to not get an MRI, and the doctor was fine with that. He thinks it’s either a bone bruise and/or tendon inflammation that just needs some good old rest and some Ibuprofen.
So, I rest for some days, take some Ibuprofen, and ease back into running. I think I’m going to not look at my training plan until I’m feeling 95% healthy again, but still try to maintain my endurance and stamina. Boston’s in 6 weeks!
