I alluded in my last post to upcoming foot surgeries I'd soon be posting about. I'm now 19 days away from the first one, and my thoughts pretty constantly revolve around how my life will change after that when I wake up from my "twilight" sleep after the first operation. In my best frame of mind, the scenario is like this: I'll spend a few weeks out of commission, getting some forced rest, spend a few weeks in a boot, limited exercise, and my right foot will be recovered. Then I repeat on the left foot and by fall I'm back on my feet again. That's the Twitter version. But the version that most often plays out in my head is more like a volume of books, with the details of every day painstakingly planned, agonized over, and wondered about. How will I make food? Bathe? Focus on work? Get the mail, take out the trash, do laundry? Will I be in a lot of pain? Will I go crazy during my long days isolated at home? Will people forget about me? Will I get the resul...

Last April, after achieving a PR at the Iron Girl Half Marathon in Clearwater, I suffered foot pain that, little did I know at the time, would keep me sidelined from running for 10 months. Today, I can finally say that the foot pain is gone. Through working with a chiropractor, Dr. Travis Mohr , on releasing the tight muscles in and around my foot that were gripping and pulling on the metatarsal heads in the ball of my foot, I was finally able to get relief from a condition I feared would plague me for the rest of my life, keeping me from ever running again. My journey to this freedom from foot pain was filled with frustration, fear, and constant disappointment. Here's what I learned throughout the process: Rest and immobilization are not always the answer . At least not longterm. In seeking medical care for my foot, I consulted with and received some form of treatment from a podiatrist, a sports therapist, three orthopedists, and three chiropractors (eighth time is a charm?)...

It's been more than seven months since I've had to step away from running . While I've been able to do other things during this time, I've experienced strong and varying emotions every day that I haven't been able to run. It occurred to me only recently, while watching an episode of Jane the Virgin  (an excellent show that I was pretty skeptical about initially), that I've been grieving the loss of running. In the episode, Jane recaps how she went through the well-known Kubler-Ross five stages of grief in one day, over the loss of a relationship. But it was her highlighting of these stages that made me realize I'd been going through the same thing—except over months, and over the loss of running. It may seem trivial, especially given the grave and tragic world events occurring daily, to make such a big deal out of running, but we all still have our personal challenges to deal with each day, and I in no way mean to minimize the suffering of others in this ...

After four steady months of swimming and biking, I decided I should go ahead and get a multi-sport watch. I really wanted it for swimming, as I'd had no real method for tracking my progress, and even my laps I 'd been counting in my head, hoping I didn't skip a number. So I went to the bike shop to check out what was available, and the choice was pretty much made for me after I looked at the prices. I "opted" for the Garmin Vivoactive , which seemed perfectly suited to my needs for a starter multi-sport watch. I was still just amazed that I could wear a watch under water! FYI, I'll probably never use the golf function. I've used it for two rides and a swim so far--but I noticed something was off on the first two summaries: The coolest feature is that I can see my strokes per lap, which are pretty consistent! 5,606 calories burned on a 20-mile ride--pretty amazing, no? As much I wanted to believe it, I knew there was no way I was burn...

I'm going on six weeks in the boot. I recently had a follow-up appointment with my orthopedist, and it wasn't the happy-making experience I thought it would be. I have a tendency to put all of my hope and faith for recovery in one appointment, when really healing is a months-long process, which I've been reluctant to accept. I thought I'd be able to go in to the appointment, convince my doctor of my  self-diagnosed neuroma , and get myself a cortisone shot. But that's not what happened. First, I don't think he was convinced I had a neuroma, but even if he had been, he wouldn't give me the shot. He said it could interfere with the healing of my fracture. Oh yeah,  that . Probably responsible doctoring, but I wasn't satisfied.  He had me get an x-ray to see what we could see. He said everything looked normal (which doesn't mean anything for my fracture), except that I had a sesamoid bone in my second metatarsal head. We all have them naturally emb...

I've been wearing my fracture boot for nearly 14 days (minus the 1.5 days I didn't have it during the Great Flood of '15 ), and I'm having a hard time with it. Not just the boot itself--its clunkiness, stuffiness, heaviness--but I'm reminded of how much longer I have to wear it and, more than that, I'm afraid the fracture isn't my only problem. I feel pain where I don't think I should, based on the location of my fracture (first metatarsal). More and more, I'm concerned that I also have a neuroma . I feel pain very specifically on the ball of my foot, around the third metatarsal head. My doctor said this could be "referred" pain from the fracture, but I'm not so sure. It's hard to know the timing of everything; I avoided getting a new MRI for weeks and weeks after initially feeling the foot pain in April, so I don't know how old (or new) the fracture was at the time of diagnosis. My hope is that, at my follow-up appointment in...

This time around, I've felt this wretched, annoying, on-and-off foot pain since my last race in April , and all along I thought the pain was caused by bursitis, which was the last diagnosis I had--over a year ago. Even though the pain I've felt this time is different--on the ball of my foot versus the top--it's in same region, around the third metatarsal head. So I saw a few doctors (orthopedist, podiatrist, physical therapist). They all went along with the bursitis diagnosis and gave me recommendations accordingly. No running, no impact, biking OK, elliptical OK, etc. But after my last attempt at coming back to running, which was woefully short-lived, I decided to see a fourth doctor, an orthopedic doc touted as "the best" in Tampa, Kevin Elder. He was quick and to the point and recommended a new MRI. He said I could have had bursitis last year but a new stress incident this year. Or I could have a neuroma. But he wanted to rule out a stress fracture first. W...

In my two months off from running, I'd gotten into a decent pattern of "other" training. Not that I was training for anything in particular--more training to stay in shape for my return to running. In a good week, I would dedicate two days to biking, two days to swimming, and two days to cardio and strength training at the gym. Although frustrating at first, I honestly have come to enjoy all of it--especially the diversity of new activities. Initially I told myself I wanted to avoid running for six weeks, which I thought would feel like forever. And while it did feel that way for the first three weeks, I found that I got so absorbed in the other activities I was doing that I practically forgot about running. Then six weeks passed. Then seven, then eight. I was afraid to run again. My foot felt good, but I feared that if I went out to try to run, I'd set myself back and have to take more time off. During my time off, I saw a podiatrist. After my first appointment, ...

Iron Girl Recap A few weeks ago, I ran the Iron Girl half marathon in Clearwater. This was the last "big" race I'd planned for the spring, so I wanted to do well, but I also hadn't been training to PR (I guess I never really do). And since my sister had planned to bring her family out to spectate, we decided we'd attempt to have my four-year-old niece, Evie, run across the finish line with me. (We tried this once before , but I was too close to a marathon PR to slow down, so I left her trailing behind me.) Because this was a smaller race and a women's-only race, I wasn't too worried about being a disruption to the race. So my focus during the race was on Evie--and it's a good thing I had a focus other than time, because, as it turned out, my watch wasn't charged, and it wasn't going to last my whole race. But in my experience, this lack of knowing, of constantly monitoring my pace, has served me well during races. (In fact, during last year...

Date Workout Miles Avg Pace Monday, 9/1 Regular Run 5.25 9:35 Tuesday, 9/2 Rest 0 -- Wednesday, 9/3 Regular Run 10 9:53 Thursday, 9/4 Regular Run 7 9:48 Friday, 9/5 Rest 0 -- Saturday, 9/6 Long Run 2.3 9:26 Sunday, 9/7 Rest 0 -- Total Weekly Mileage: 24.55 This past week not did not end up the way I'd hoped it would. Although it started strong, with high mileage weekday runs and little pain, by the time Friday rolled around, my foot was hurting more than usual. I hoped it was a fluke. I went to bed Friday night and hoped a good night's sleep would have me feeling better in the morning and ready to conquer 20 miles. That did not happen. I met my friend Nicole for an early warm-up mile, and that mile didn't feel great. I couldn't decide whether I should just quit there or try to start with the group and hope for the best. Nicole reminded me that I bailed on her this same time of year last year, around her birthday, because I felt like I was going ...

Date Workout Miles Avg Pace Monday, 8/25 Regular Run 3 9:30 Tuesday, 8/26 Regular Run 9 10:45 Wednesday, 8/27 Yoga 0 -- Thursday, 8/28 Regular Run 7 9:47 Friday, 8/29 Rest 0 -- Saturday, 8/30 Long Run 18 9:54 Sunday, 8/31 Rest 0 -- Total Weekly Mileage: 37 Last week started out a bit rough: I overslept for my Monday morning run and ended up doing three instead of four miles (not a huge deal, and not enough of a shortage for me to want to make up), and I decided I also didn't want to get up early on Tuesday morning, so I decided to do my nine miles that evening. And that was one of the worst runs I've had in recent memory. I haven't run in the evening in some time, so I wasn't used to the lingering heat and humidity from the day, and my stomach wasn't accustomed to running during that part of the day, so I had all kinds of cramps--side stitches, water cramps from drinking too much, and, er, BM cramps. But on top of that, my body had no energy...

Date Workout Miles Avg Pace Monday, 8/18 Yoga 0 -- Tuesday, 8/19 Rest 0 -- Wednesday, 8/20 Yoga 0 -- Thursday, 8/21 Regular Run 5 9:38 Friday, 8/22 Rest 4 9:26 Saturday, 8/23 Long Run/Yoga 12 9:43 Sunday, 8/24 Yoga in the Park 0 -- Total Weekly Mileage: 21.5 So, this was my break week. But it doesn't look exactly like a break week. I made it through four days in a row (including the Sunday you don't see) without running (and check out all the yoga!). And then I tried a lower-mileage run on Thursday morning to assess where I was, pain-wise. It wasn't too bad, but my foot still hurt afterward as I was walking around. I'd made an appointment to see a sports massage therapist after work on Thursday, not having very high hopes for treatment--not because I didn't think the guy was good, but because I didn't think massage was an effective treatment for my particular problem (bursitis, or metatarsalgia). So I spent a half hour with Pete Pfannerst...