I'm now more than 12 weeks recovered from my second (and final!) foot surgery, and life is starting to feel a little more normal. When I l ast wrote an update , seven weeks ago (still blaming Irma for all of my delays), I had just gotten off of crutches but would wear my boot for two more weeks. I've been out of the boot and walking in shoes for just over five weeks. The constant discomfort I've felt in my foot from swelling is finally starting to wane. I work in the office now, I do my own groceries, and I even attended a work conference recently, which meant lots of walking at airports and the conference hotel, frequent standing, and few opportunities to elevate and ice. I was very concerned about how my feet, particularly the left one, would endure. And while it wasn't comfortable, I made it through, no worse for the wear in the end. I joined a new gym/community center recently, with a new and beautiful outdoor pool, and I'm so happy that I'm able to use ...

I set out several weeks ago to train for a marathon , knowing there might be a chance I'd have to change my end goal to a half marathon. And so that has happened. Maybe my training plan was too ambitious for where I was in my body, having spent the better part of a year not running and generally trying to avoid being on my feet, or rather my foot, and then slowly coming back to running over the course of four months. I started with a two-mile test run one week, then three miles, gradually adding on a couple more low-mile run days per week. So to expect to go from that careful, measured reentry to a full-on marathon training was perhaps unrealistic, though hopeful. And that I was hopeful is okay; for a time when I wasn't running, I was not hopeful and had forgotten that it was okay to have hope. But back to my current reality. When I did my farthest long run since April 2015 , 12 miles, my body did not support it. Both feet hurt, my hips hurt. And not just in the typical pav...

Something had to give. Last year I worked hard to establish a full workout schedule sans running, so incorporating running back in inevitably meant I'd have to adjust for a new schedule. And now that I'm able to run three days a week (yay!), I've had to decide what to let go of. I wanted to remain a versatile athlete—and a strong, healthy one. So I knew I needed to keep strength training in, which left me essentially choosing between swimming and biking. And that's not really a hard choice for me; swimming had become a new love over the course of my foot injury, and biking, well, let's just say I never became chummy with that sport. Plus, I committed to a challenge to swim 111 miles over the course of a year, and I still need to swim at least twice a week to meet that goal. I don't imagine I'll abandon the bike altogether, but I won't try to work it into my weekly training. Maybe that will actually help; maybe trying to force it has made me resent...

I think I know why I've struggled to fully latch on to swimming and cycling. Part of it is just starting out new. But I can't really play the newbie card anymore, particularly with swimming. What I'm missing, I think, is the thrill of competition (except for the occasional instances when, unbeknownst to the swimmer in the lane next to me, I engage in a full-out race with him or her to the wall and back). With running, the sport became more exciting to me when I started entering distance races. I began where most everyone does—with a 5k—but then decided that wasn't enough, so I trained for a 15k and soon thereafter a half marathon, etc. Those events propelled my love for running forward. I was never racing for prestige or placement but rather to challenge myself; to push myself further than I knew I ever would if I—me, myself—had been the only motivating source. I needed the accountability and structure that came with race training. And now, without the race factor, I ...

This past year was one of the most challenging years of my life. It started out with a loose foundation: fresh out of a long-term relationship, living in a new space, still new at my job. I had some early successes with running, but that changed abruptly when I developed pain in my left foot that would keep me from running for the rest of the year. Running was therapy for me. It provided me with a physical outlet, a meditative space, a constant cycle of challenge and reward. It gave me confidence and kept me healthy—except when it didn't. So without a lot of stability to begin with, my world as I knew it was shaken, and I had little to fall on. And rather than reach out to loved ones, I wanted to fall apart. I was lucky to have some close friends and family members help pick me up. I was able to end the year on a good note, spending lots of time with family, dedicating myself more to swimming, and appreciating whatever abilities I had in a given day, even when it wasn't running...

Okay, I know that's a bad wordplay on what is already an eggcorn , but I couldn't help myself. The allusion, of course, is to swimming, which is something I am able to do right now. In addition to laying off of running, I've decided I need to give biking a break, because, if I'm being honest with myself (which I sometimes hate doing), it aggravates my foot—and my pelvis, but that's another issue. While the impact of biking is minimal, I still use my foot to push down on my pedal, which creates enough pressure that it could be delaying healing. So there's my first confession for the day. Confession #2: No activity I do is pain free. So even swimming sometimes exacerbates pain I've been experiencing in the medial (inside) arch of my foot. Frustrating, right? (Right!) But it's mild and its level of irritation seems to be directly related to how long and hard I swim. So when I went to a coached group swim last Tuesday, I swam harder than I normally do on ...

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...

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, ...

So this no-running thing has its advantages. I went from almost solely running to branching out into other activities I previously ignored because (1) they seemed burdensome (equipment, etc.) and (2) I would have to learn how to do them more efficiently. It was easier to stick to my solo sport--until I had to deal with an injury. After a recent appointment with my favorite orthopedist (only a very injury-prone person gets to claim a "favorite"), Larry Collins, I was convinced I needed to get clip-in pedals and cycling shoes for my bike, and ride "clipless." I don't understand this terminology; it contradicts itself. But whatever. The point is, I need to keep my foot flat, rather than bending it and putting pressure on the ball of my foot, and cycling shoes don't really bend. So despite the expense, I decided it would be a good investment for longterm cross-training. One thing that has always put me off about cycling is the cost of everything--bike aside (w...

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...