I've been dealing with foot pain since completing the Clearwater Marathon , over a month ago, and while I surely thought I'd be past it by the time the Gasparilla race weekend rolled around, I am not. My meager attempts at resting my foot (in between little trial runs every few days) have not been sufficient. So I decided this past weekend to let go of my hope to run the Gasparilla half marathon. It was a really hard decision, as I look forward to this local race each year. It's my favorite. The Gasparilla 15k was my first long(er than a 5k) distance race, and the half marathon has been a great PR (personal record) course for me in recent years . But I knew that if I ran it, I'd want to run hard and try to PR, and that would possibly seriously injury my foot and certainly set my recovery time back even further. So I emailed the Gasparilla folks to see if I could get a deferment of my race registration for next year, almost entirely expecting a firm "no" b...

Saturday morning, I woke up to my alarm, set for 4:55am. I took a quick shower, put on my race outfit, including the cute new pair of shorts I'd bought for half-off at the BDR expo, and I stopped to consider the pain in my left foot. I felt it when I merely walked from the bathroom to the bedroom--each time my foot went from flat to flexed and pushed off the ground. And sometimes, unknowingly, I'd step in a way that made the pain suddenly sharp and pinching. Also, my neck was a little sore from having been rear-ended on my way to work the previous morning (no damage to either car). So I doubted out loud whether I should try to run the half marathon that morning. Tim helped talk me down from the ledge, repeating the logic I'd already told myself over and over again: I wasn't going to have a good race no matter what, and chances were, I'd only make my foot worse by racing on it, and then I might not be able to run the Gasparilla half marathon three weeks later. Also...