OK, it might not be great for running but.... Yes, I appear to have a stress fracture. I know! How could that have possibly happened with all the running, tennis and various other training I have been doing? OK, maybe I was overdoing it a bit. There was not a particular event that happened that I can point back to and say this is where I injured myself. The short version is I ran my 14 miles on Saturday, felt fine, not anything other than normal. I practiced serving tennis balls on Sunday for about 45 minutes. Fine, not a lot of running involved there... After tennis, I went to Publix and as I was walking around the aisles, my left foot had a weird pain in it. I guess shopping is more strenuous than I realized!
I iced it when I got home and it really didn't help. It feels fine when I am seated but hurts to walk. Thus the boot... Normally, I wouldn't run to the doctor but with the schedule for the marathon and triathlons coming up I didn't want to waste a lot of time waiting to see if it would heal itself. The conclusion is that I most liekly have a stress fracture. I am supposed to wear the boot until Friday and then go back for a follow up Friday afternoon. On the bright side, I can swim and bike all I want. I think I might have been on suicide watch otherwise...
My doctor is really great, he seems to understand the torture of not being able to stay active. Depending on how things look on Friday, he said he may let me run ONE mile on Saturday and possibly TWO on Sunday. That sounds so funny to me because that feels like nothing now after crossing the 10 mile threshold on a regular basis. The guys in my group and I were just just saying on Saturday how funny it is that in March the ING half was so monumental and now we are running that distance and more every Saturday. To go back down to 1 mile is like a walk around the house. I am going to do what the doctor says, it is not something I really want to mess around with. I may end up bowing out of the Acworth Triathlon in a couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes...
For now, on my list of 14,001 things to be happy about, I can still swim!
2 comments:
A stress fracture isnt caused by a single event. It is something that builds up over time. It can be caused by all sorts of things: building speed/distance too quickly, poor running form, old shoes.
I had had repetitive stress fractures in my shin till I started doing triathlons and forced cross training instead of just running
I can't wait for the day when running 1 mile feels like walking around the house to me. All the runners I talk to tell me that day will come sooner than I think. I hope so!
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