Something tweaks, bends, pinches, or shoots a stinging pain right up into your brain. This isn't a full-blown injury - rolling on the path hoping the cyclist who just whizzed by you will turn around and make sure you aren't left for dead - this is the pain that sets off a circular inner turmoil of what do I do now?
This happened to me on Sunday and it's been weighing on me for the past three days. At around my halfway point - about four and a half miles in - I was jammin' to some D. Guetta and then a shooting pain came from under the arch of my left foot up the right side of my ankle. And I panicked.
Here's what went through my mind in the following 10 seconds.
Crap. What happened? Nothing happened. Then why does my foot hurt? I'll just keep running. I'll run it off. Yeah, that'll help. It's not helping. This is like that time freshman year when I pulled this same tendon when I did yoga for the first time. I should go to yoga tomorrow. Except the mean yoga teacher is there on Mondays. You think the minimal running shoes have something to do with it? I do have pretty flat feet and they really don't have any arch support. But the Born to Run guy said that minimal shoes would help my feet get stronger! Oh! I think it's feeling better now. I freaked out for no-OUCH! What am I going to do? I have a race in a month! But I should be in okay shape if I need to take a few rest days...but what if it doesn't get better? No it will get better. Should I buy new shoes? maybe new shoes will help. There is a shoe buying guide in this Runner's World...
And so on. My brain's a scary place.
And then I took two days off. I tried really hard to be nice to my foot. I iced it, I wrapped it in an Ace bandage, I iced it again. By yesterday morning I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to go out for 2, maybe 3 miles to see if it felt okay.
I wore my "traditional" running shoes hoping that the extra cushioning and support might help my foot out. And my foot was...fine. "Fine" being that I could definitely feel that it was still sore, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't power through. So my question is, where do you draw the line?
I'm running the Movin' Shoes Frosty 5k in Madison on Saturday - so I'm going to cross train until then. A little elliptical, definitely some yoga, and then (fingers crossed!) my foot will feel solid on Saturday morning. This also means that I don't have a long run for another ten days, which should be plenty of time to get my foot back in shape. I just want to make sure that I don't overdo it and turn whatever this is into a full-fleged injury.
And definitely still planning on crushing the National Half Marathon. Justsoyaknow.
Have you ever had a pain that was on the brink of becoming an injury? How did you deal with it? Have you ever had to wear a blue boot? Did you also love that Disney Channel original movie Brink?
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