Stupid mysterious foot injury

   The big race is aborted.  My participation in Operation: Double Secret Bigfoot is a failure.  I seem to have a possible bone bruise between my fifth metatarsal and the cuboid bone.  I don't know for sure because my doctor wants to rest the foot to see if the area heals and the pain clears up.  In the meantime, I have to wear a compression sleeve on my right foot.  I also have to rub some prescription strength bengay ointment stuff on my foot.  It burns just a little while it's on but luckily it's bad smell helps distract me from the burning sensation

please excuse my runner's toes

      .  The inserts kind of suck.  I've been wearing them a whole day.  My wife, who wears inserts, says it takes some time to get used to them.  "About two weeks", she said.  Fun.   I used to have funky feet as a kid.  I had to wear corrective shoes when I was about two or three years of age.  Thankfully, I don't remember ever having to wear them.  I remember going to the doctor about it but since I was a kid I didn't think anything about it.  It was normal.  Normal for me anyway.  I never thought about that time til now.  I guess the inserts having me thinking back to then.  I really don't remember any of it though.
     It's been a week since my last run.  That run felt good.  I went to McCormick's creek state park and ran a little over 5 miles.  I felt good the whole time with only a minor concern in my foot.  I didn't think anything of it since I knew I would be hypersensitive and mindful of my foot the whole time.  I ran, jumped and landed, and launched off rocks all without any pain or issue during or later that afternoon.  I came home and iced my foot just to be cautious.  I thought I was in the clear.
     Then the next morning I woke up to the same pain again.  I hobbled through my morning and was totally deflated and in a bad mood most of the day.  I called and set up an appointment with a podiatrist and just waited for the appointment day.
     So here I am writing this.  Part of me wants to go for a run, but there is the fear of aggravating the injury before it's healed fully.   But there's the fear and a plague of "what if's" that are going through my brain.  What if the inserts don't work?  What if I screw up the injury again like last week?  What if you're just being a pussy and driving yourself crazy for no fucking reason?  Things like that.

me driving myself batty with my "What if?" scenarios.

     It's a relatively minor injury that happened to occur at an unfortunate time in my training.  There are people in this world with a lot worse injuries and conditions than me.  I'm being kind of a dipshit about this whole thing in the grand scheme of things.  It's been frustrating but I've been keeping myself busy with weight training, stretching, and yoga.   To keep my cardio fit I've been riding an exercise bike.  I have no idea what I'm doing on the thing though.  I rode 30 miles on it and then 18 the next day.  My quads were tired the whole ride of the 18 miler but it was better than just sitting on my ass.
     The race I've been training for isn't going to happen for me.  I don't know how I feel about it.  I've had plenty of time to consider the possibility of not reaching the starting line for the race in the last couple of weeks.  Unfortunately I have gotten used to an injury taking me out of a race in the short time I've been back running.  I have a very small success rate when it comes to signing up for a race, training for it, and making it to the finish line it seems.  Anymore I'm getting the pessimistic mindset that any race I pay to enter is going to be a donation and I'll get to run it if I avoid injuring myself.  I don't know how healthy this is but I get a small amusement out of it.
         Part of me wants to blame winter for this, but could I just have a flaw in my running footfall? There is obviously something wrong with my foot caused by how I land on it.  If there wasn't a mechanics flaw, then how did the injury occur?  Could it be that I've just been getting lucky so far and my increased mileage brought the problem to light?  I have no idea.  Could the injury just be shitty luck and a fluke?  I have no idea.  Could it be that all the running I did was on roads and not trails?  I have no idea.  Is it better that I get to rest through winters last hurrah with an injury rather than through spring?  Probably.  Was I ready for the race?  I don't know.  My last big run was the catalyst for the injury, so it's hard to tell.  All of this has shaken my confidence.  They say that a lot of endurance running is mental.  I'm wondering if I have the mental fortitude to keep at this.  This injury has me wondering if I have the physical fortitude to keep at this as well.  I know this will all change when the smoke clears and I'm back to training for some race that, hopefully, won't end up being just a donation to some race director.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.

thanks for reading this