Arr Matey!

I thought a humorous story after all the bad news might be in order to help lighten the mood. Well, I've been hobbling around now for the past few weeks. At first I did it because my foot was killing me, now I do it to keep off of it so it can heal faster. Well, last Wednesday we had an outdoor church activity out in the woods with a bonfire and marshmallows, the works. The girls loved it except for our youngest who had to be held as there was a dog on the loose and she's not too keen on animals. So I ended up holding her the whole time. The other thing about this activity was that it was at dusk which means mosquitoes. About a half an hour into the festivities many of us had already been eaten alive by those little buggers, even though we had put bug spray on. Every now and then I would feel them on my forehead and I'l either brush them off, smack them dead or have someone else do it for me (though the 2 times someone else smacked me in the head, I don't remember seeing any evidence of the mosquitoes after the fact). Anyway, I was holding my youngest and I felt one of those blood suckers on my head and I smacked it. Well, my 2 year old saw me wack myself in the head and thought she'd help so she smacked me too. Only her fingers landed in my right eye. I knew she had scratched my cornea, but I was hoping the pain would go away. It didn't.

So now I'm hobbling along with one eye shut. My wife drove home and I went immediately to the urgent care. I was a parrot short of the best pirate impression that urgent care had ever seen. Turns out she had got me twice. I still blame the mosquitoes. The fun part was the lady who checked me in to the urgent care was the same lady who registered me at the hospital for my foot scan. Yep, I'm falling apart, one body part at a time.

Major Roadblock

In my previous post, I told the story of my 17 mile run. I mentioned a slight pain on the top of my right foot. The pain I thought was more of a nuisance than actually painful. Well, that has changed. Later that day I had a difficult time walking and putting weight on that foot. I ended up hobbling around for the rest of the weekend as putting pressure of the balls of my feet caused the pain at the top of my foot to intensify dramatically. As the next week after the 17 miler was a step back week, I ran about 4 miles on that Tuesday, but took the rest of the week off to rest the foot. This past week I tried to get out Monday to test the foot and see if just running would calm the pain down. Nothing doing. I couldn't get to the end of my street before stopping and realizing the foot was not ready. Creeping up on a full week without running, I was getting worried. My amazing wife suggested that I try biking instead, so I got out on the bike just to see if that would work in place of running. It was nice to get out and "work out" tough I didn't feel that I was really working out. I barely broke a sweat. I must be doing it wrong.

Unable to determine what I should do, my wife and I decided to get it looked at. I went to the doctor and got an X-ray. They really couldn't tell anything so they ordered a bone scan to tell for sure. However, I had to wait 2 days to get in. This was the first time I had heard that I could have a stress fracture in my foot. If this was the case it probably means that I will miss the marathon. Before I got all worked up about missing out on the marathon I decided to wait and see what the bone scan revealed.

The tech was very nice and explained what the bone scan would show if there was something there to see. Well, I did see something, it looked like a little ball the size of a ball bearing right at the top of my foot where the pain is. The tech, unable to diagnose what this means, did say that running 19 miles this weekend is out.

After leaving 3 messages for my original doctor, I finally get a call back telling me it is in fact a stress fracture. This is a huge blow. I had been training and excited for this for 7 months and now I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it. The marathon is 4 Saturday's away (closer to 5 weeks) and I believe my foot will be healed by then especially since my last long run (the 17 miler) was on Sept. 11. So its been 2 weeks since the pain started and 1 week since I've really started to baby the foot. The real concern is keeping in shape or keeping my endurance up without running. Biking will help, but I don't know if the muscles I use while biking will translate to running. The doctor mentioned that I could try aqua jogging. I have never heard of it, but if it will help me keep up my endurance and fitness I'll try it. It was difficult telling my buddy, because it was he that got me into this whole running gig in the first place and now I can't train with him for the long runs and questionable to run in the marathon. I hate to disappoint him and myself however, this is the reality. Living in a smaller town, I don't believe we have any aqua jogging classes I can take here, but my buddy found some in his town. So I'll have to look into this option as the new week opens tomorrow.

So, to continue with training and support my buddy we decided I'll ride a bike as he runs for the next few weeks, which we did yesterday and though it was really different it was still nice to be out there. My buddy doesn't need to worry about the marathon, he'll be great. Me, on the other hand, I've got lots of work ahead of me to keep up my fitness, but I'm still hopeful that I can run the marathon the end of October. I might not run at the pace I want, but I will run this marathon. Well, my normal ending to my posts might not be accurate as I can't run right now, but I still have the desire to run, so I will still say gotta run.

Learning New Lessons

Due to scheduling conflicts as school and Saturday kids soccer has started up again, my buddy and I were unable to run together for our 17 miler. Iin a funny way it worked out better that way for me as I needed to do this run by myself to clear my head from the drama of the past week. The 6-7 milers during the week were fair. Not anything amazing. I keep trying to push my pace during the week, but I don't know if I see any real change. Some runs the pace is better, other runs of the same distance I struggle through. Not sure what I'm doing that's different, but I'll take the good runs when I get them.

I got out early for a Saturday (6:30) and the heavens were spitting on me. It really wasn't raining, but there was something being sprayed in my face. I had only gone 2 blocks when I felt something weird on the top of my right foot. It felt like a rock between my foot and the top of my shoe. I stopped to look, but didn't find anything. So I kept going. I went about a half mile further and the pain (it was more of an annoyance than pain) was still there. So I adjusted the tongue in my shoe, retied the laces, and went off again. Still a little troublesome, but didn't really was a non-factor the rest of the run.

Over a mile into the run, the rain really starts coming down. With no real shelter from trees, I just have to tough it out. I chuckle to myself as I think that this is some kind of test. Either I can leave my goals of training for a marathon at the puddles in the road and go back home because of the rain, or I can keep myself focused and run through the little bumps in the road. As in life, when something bad happens, I can either give up because its too tough, or keep focused see my goals through to the end. I decided I would keep running. After 3-5 minutes of rain, it let up and didn't really rain the rest of my 17 miles.

I was out of gels so I had to find something else to keep my energy up. All I could find in the cupboards were M&M's. A few of those each little break and a half a banana on the bigger breaks seemed to keep me energized and able to complete the rather long run. I'd stick to the gels though from here on out.

The last 2 miles were pretty difficult, but I was able to finish the 17 miler at a good pace of around 9:25 minute miles. Though my right foot was sore the rest of the day I was still pleased with how the run went and I'm beginning to think that running this marathon is actually possible. Gotta run.

Increasing Miles

Well, with a well deserved week off after the half marathon (just fewer miles, not really a week off), it was time to increase the miles on our Saturday runs. First was a 15 mile run. We did well. We've heard a number of opinions of how to train and run the marathon. Since neither one of us has ever run one, we are not sure which is correct, or which will work for us. We would like to run the whole marathon, do it in under 4 hours, and live to tell the tale. Its funny to think that we were dreading running 13 miles and now we plan to double it. It is very helpful to have someone to run with. These long runs are difficult anyway, but finding ways to pass the time with out a buddy would be excrusiating.

So we plan on taking our training runs slower than we will for the marathon to save a little for the actual event. We also plan to take a few breaks during the long runs to get fluids back as well as gel up for energy, since we plan to walk to aid stations and make sure we (or I) don't spill all the contents of my cup on my shirt. Right, wrong, or otherwise, we plan on sticking with this and next week we'll be jumping to 17 miles. Yikes! Gotta run.