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.