Injured and being a big obsessive baby about it.....or something

     I guess I only write posts when I have an injury.  I rested my foot for the last week and had no pain yesterday and when I woke this morning.  I figured I would go for a little injury recovery test run, about three miles, and see what was happening.
     There was a mild "pressure" in the area but I didn't think anything of it.  Coming back from injury has always caused a hyper-awareness of the injured area.  Today was no different.  I ran some and walked some to get my heart rate stabilized.  This was a near impossible feat for some reason.  I decided to blame the half pot of coffee I drank before deciding to go for my run.  My heart rate was way too high which made me walk to calm it down....then run when it was in a desirable level.
    This continued for the first couple of miles which was fine.  My foot felt good at times and concerning at others...nothing unusual.  Some oddness was expected.  Then just past the two and a half mile point I experienced a sharp pain in the spot.  I immediately brought the run to a walk with a wave of rage mixed with frustration and disappointment. Mostly rage.

          I walked for a couple of yards and then began at a light trot for home.  Luckily I was just running little laps around my neighborhood just in case something like this happened. 
     I made it home without any more surprise pain signals and immediately iced my foot for about twenty minutes.  Walking on it seems fine and there isn't any lingering pain.  I may have stopped in time to prevent any set backs...who knows...
     Then for the next hour or so I just took my frustrations out on lifting weights, doing core work, and body weight exercises.  I even got out the Bosu balance trainer to see if  one legged standing on my bad foot irritated it.  (I was fine and discovered that I could use some improving on my balance.) For some reason, doing something physical to focus on seems to keep my mind from obsessing about what could be wrong with my foot.  Then I decide to write a blog post and here I am obsessing about what could be wrong with my foot.  Free association symptom obsession that leads everywhere from some kind of soft tissue damage to possible stress fractures.
     My chiropractor did a stress fracture test with some kind of large tuning fork thing.  If I had a stress fracture the tiny vibrations in the spot would have been excruciatingly painful.  Luckily I passed that test.  The next day I had an x-ray and that didn't show anything either.  The next step, if things persist in the next week or so, is to get an MRI.  Hopefully it won't come to that.  Hopefully I just need some more time to heal and I can get back to it. 
     In the meantime, it seems like I will have to occupy myself with weight lifting, core work, and stretching to keep myself busy.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid I will spend the whole time obsessing over what is wrong with my foot.

Operation double secret bigfoot

    So my wife and I have been "secretly" training for an ultra race.  I say "secretly" because the closer we get to the race the more people seem to be finding out or figuring out that we've been training for something.  I've told a handful of people (my doctor, my chiropractor, my trainer at the gym, my massage therapist, the guy who you have to give your day off requests to at work).  People that needed to know.  It's not a big deal that the cats getting out of the bag.   I think it's getting so close that it's better for our nerves to tell people.
     I originally dubbed the whole thing "Operation Double Secret Bigfoot".  The reason I wanted to keep it all hush hush is because the race distance is new territory for me.  I just wanted to keep the event to myself, my wife, and a close group of friends.  My wife and friends have utmost confidence that I can finish the distance.
     Fifty miles scares the shit out of me.  Mentally I think I can handle the distance.  Physically is a whole other thing.  At the beginning of February I had a strange muscle dysfunction happen to a stabilizer muscle in my right shin.  It was fine to run on except when going downhill.  It hurt like hell.  I basically rested it for four days and then it was fine.  This led to a cut down week and a huge snowstorm.  This combo led me to do some treadmill running for the week. I ran 18 on the machine and then did a 5 or 6 mile run in town to see if the shin muscle healed.  Thankfully it did and it was then time to taper for a 50k training run.
     The 50k (31 miles) training run was a mixed bag of success and one failure.  I've been getting in the habit of taking electrolyte pills every six miles on long runs.  I did a tour of Bloomington and hit a couple of businesses for water breaks and water refills.  I stopped and stretched when I felt the need.  I had a couple of Ugo bars and a couple of Epic meat bars.
     At the twenty mile mark I ran into my friend Deke and that boosted my spirit and energy.  Then somewhere around mile 24 my left knee started giving me problems on a stretch of snow packed sidewalk.  The pain got annoying and wouldn't go away.  I decided to walk to see if that would be better.  Just slightly.  Then when I tried to run again the pain was worse than what it was, but lessened as I kept going.  It was around here that I also realized that I dropped one of my Salomon skin flasks.  That fucker cost me eighteen bucks.  I decided to cut the run and get back to my car.  Shortening the scheduled mileage by four miles.
     I went home and iced my knee.  Used a foam roller and a runner's stick on it.  Then took an anti-inflammatory.  I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night to take my dog out.  The knee was a little stiff and had a slight pain in it.  When I woke in the morning it was a little tender but totally tolerable.  By the end of the day it felt fine.  It was forty degrees outside when I got off work and I had to really resist going for a run.  I was scheduled for a rest day and common sense forced me to do it.
     I also had a slight weird twinge in my right foot the next day.  I was wearing my hiking boots at the time (which hurt my feet anyway) so I just kind of blamed it on them.  On Saturday I went for my a small five mile run and halfway through it I had a couple of sharp pains surge through the foot.  Then the next day,Sunday, I went for an eleven mile run with the intention of being mindful of the spot where the pain occurred.  It was a little tender at times but the tenderness came and went but never stayed.  I finished my run and was pleased that the foot pain was gone.
     So I started shoveling my driveway after the run and my foot started hurting.  Like Hurting !!!  Halfway through the task I started to hobble and my mood soured.  Damn !!!  I hobbled all day.  At the grocery store, at a charity dinner benefit, and in every parking lot.  I took Monday and Tuesday off of running and the pain has lessened.  I've been icing and taking anti-inflammatories. 
     So here I am typing this.  I'm confident the current injury will heal in time for the race.   I guess I'm worried that I'll have another injury pop up on the big race day.  If it happens; it happens.  It'll bug the piss out of me, but there won't be anything I can do. If it's something manageable I will just have to compensate for it.  I would like to finish the race but a DNF is always a possibility. 
     I look forward to pushing myself to a new distance personal record.  I know that I won't emerge unscathed.  I know I'll emerge changed, but hopefully for the better. My main goal is to finish the race and have fun doing it without destroying myself.  I guess I'm at the point where pushing myself to my limit and going beyond that is fun.  I like to think I'm capable of doing it....I just hope this aging body cooperates.  Hopefully, I'm getting all the possible injuries out of the way so when I get to the starting line I'll be nice and shiny.

Stupid f'n two or three day injuries

     Good Lord.  Winter is grinding me down.  I've been developing little annoying injuries that last anywhere from three days to a week.  I'll heal through one with minimal training schedule skipping days only to pick up another the following week.  So far I've been lucky the niggles have developed just prior to a cut down week.  It was no biggie to skip a run in order to healing, rest, catch up on house work, and dog hang out time.
     I can't decide if all these little injuries are a result of all this cold weather running or not.  I just got over a weird stabilization muscle issue in my right shin only to develop a pain in my right knee on my last long run (which bullshittingly cut it short).  The knee thing went away only for me to realize there is a knot in the muscle of the same leg's calf.  I've been trying to figure out if the injury is from running or working out at the gym.  My wife thinks trying to figure it out is stupid and/or crazy.  I guess I'm just a mixture of those two things then.  
     Typically I don't have much going on in my head so that gives me time to analyze my activities.   This causes me to overthink these things a lot.  I don't know if this is normal or not.  It's just what I do.  I guess when I was younger these injuries were instant and their causes were immediately known. Overuse injuries and tired body parts aren't a new thing, but when you add an aging body to the mix....I don't know. 
    Anyway, I'll just keep on keeping on.