I’m quite embarrassed to check in again, 5 drama filled weeks after my last post, but here we are. The last good run I had was February 5th and it was a great run. I smashed my PR by almost 7 minutes, felt great the whole time and ran with my two [temp] converts – GF and her sister. Then I picked up the flu and was out for two weeks and my ability to run the LA Marathon was in doubt. I viewed it as my first major setback, completely ignoring the foot pain that wrecked my run on January 29th, which we’ll get back to, of course.
The flu was rough. I picked it up on a Thursday, attributing the first sign of it to post-run cigar throat soreness. I’m a comedian and I like to smoke a cigar between my Thursday post-work run and my Thursday night comedy show sometimes. The wrong cigar or if I smoke to much of it will give me a sore throat, especially if I went hard on the run earlier, which I did, so I didn’t notice I was sick until half-way through my Friday when I caught the chills and went home early.
Needless to say I didn’t run that Sunday. I did go for a walk, though, about half a mile to the store and back to get some orange juice in the hopes that getting bundled up and getting outside in the crisp night air would relieve my dizziness, which it didn’t. After the fevers went away and I could sleep again, the cough lingered for a long time. Thanks to my Ulcerative Colitis, I’m on immunosuppressors which means infections and sicknesses are more easy to catch and harder to get rid of, so while a flu might knock a normal person out for 10 days, I was hampered for 2 weeks.
2 very slow weeks because my last run was my first run in my new Merrell Road Gloves, which I had been waiting for since I had read reviews and got caught up in their hype. It was awful just staring at them knowing I wasn’t able to use them properly. Sometimes I’d put them on instead of slippers just because I was excited to have them. Mercifully my girlfriend understood or didn’t notice, so I wasn’t teased or bullied about my childlike need to play with my new toys.
My first “run” back was a hike just to get my feet back under me and it went just fine except for some pain in my left foot coming down the hill. The same pain I had towards the end of the Rose bowl half marathon and the same pain that slowed me down near the end of the Surf City half and the same one that popped up near the end of most of my long training runs and forced me to skip more than one shorter recovery run on Tuesday and even stop the Back-bay run 11 miles short of what I had planned to do that day. I dumbly thought my shoes were too tight, a likely story as it hurt right under the laces. I thought my shoes and socks were too snug to accommodate my foot as it swelled during exercise and that caused me pain. No big deal, as I had new shoes that fit better and thinner socks.
Thanks to all the flu and injuries I realized I would have to adjust my goals for the LA Marathon. I was no longer going to attempt to get through it faster than my last marathon, though that would be nice; I didn’t have the volume behind me to do something like that safely or effectively. My new goal was to just finish. By this point I had yet to acknowledge that my foot was a problem aside from mentioning the pain casually and saying I’d see a doctor after the OC marathon in May, then dropping a “something’s broken in there,” laughing and moving on. In my head I sounded like a total badass. In their heads I was an idiot.
But I only live in my head, so my awesome self hatched a new plan. I had 3 weeks before the marathon. I would go for 20 miles on schedule. If I made it, great, I’m ready to run the marathon. If not, no worries, I would just trim my taper to 1 week and go for it again the following Sunday. I did not make it. My morning run turned into an afternoon run thanks to the ole’ rumbly in my tumbly and it was warmer than I thought it’d be. I started feeling tired around mile 11 and barely made it to 16 before run-walking three more and calling it quits. I decided run-walking was an effective strategy and comforted myself in knowing that if worse came to worst, I’d still roll through the finish line and grab that finisher’s medal, knowing full well I’d not given my all, but still somehow pulling it together to just get it done, setting the bar low for 2013.
The next week was the same except it was 80 degrees by mile 9 and there is no shade on the beach, where I run because I can and it’s amazing. Plus there are tons of public restrooms and drinking fountains. It took me 4 hours, but I finished. It felt great: 20 miles done despite all the setbacks I had (still not acknowledging the nagging pain in my left foot as a thing).
Do you see where this is going? I didn’t. Call it a mix of confirmation bias and hindsight, but I should have sought medical attention at the first or second incidents of pain instead of toughing it out because I had already signed up and paid for a bunch of races and didn’t want the doctors to tell me the dreaded truth: this is an injury that needs attention and that attention will be at the expense of running. I ignored it.
I ignored it and now I can’t run. Hell, I can hardly walk. Would have been nice if it held out for another week, but it didn’t. I took a 9 mile spin down in San Clemente this Sunday morning. Usually in the two days leading up to the long run, any pain in the foot goes away, but this time it didn’t. I took some Excedrin and headed out the door and a snail’s pace. The pills worked until about mile 5 when the pain overtook them and every step was slightly worse than the last. At mile 8 I left the cement / asphalt in lieu of the soft sand which only helped a bit, then I started running in the cold water which helped a bit more, but by the end I was definitely limping. I took my shoes off and waded into the water for a little pseudo ice bath. It didn’t help. I limped up the hill back to the condo where I stayed and haven’t taken an honest step since.
It was so bad that I went to urgent care and they took X-rays and now I’m waiting. If there’s no pain in it by Saturday, and the doctors haven’t told me no, I will be running the LA Marathon. I say that and I know I sound like an idiot, but I also know that it’s a non-issue and it won’t not hurt so I’ll never have to prove how badass I am, and instead can take some lessons away from this debacle. Lessons I already knew but didn’t believe such as establishing a base of fitness when starting a barefoot / minimal running regimen and if you ignore that gem then at least listen to your body when it screams STOP! Also, I’ll wait a bit longer to sign up for races and definitely hold off on multiple races in quick succession to avoid the domino effect that I’m about to ride out.
At least now I’ll have time to get back to trying to sell a TV pilot and won’t have an excuse not to get back to my slow-carb weight loss goal, both of which conflicted heavily with running 9 hours a week and working full time. I’ve never been the silver lining guy. I hate not running already.
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