Boston Training Week #5

January 27 - February 2

M - AM 6 PM 5, gym

T - 9

W - 15 - The workout, as planned, was a warmup; 2 by 10 minutes with 3 minutes rest, 60 minutes, another 10-minute pickup, cooldown. I ran down to Hains Point from work and met up the Capitol Hill Distance Project crew. I did a 2-mile pickup around Hains Point, keying off Charlie, in about 11 minutes. Jogged a few minutes, then did another 10-minute pickup, keeping it in the 5:30s. After the second pickup, I started feeling really cold and hungry, so I threw in the 3rd 10-min rep about 45 minutes after the last one instead of after 60. I had that feeling I was really entering into good marathon shape: wasn't going that fast (about 5:45 pace) but felt like I could run "hard" for a long time without it really wearing on me - if that makes sense. Does it?

That night, though, as I was falling asleep, my right foot didn't feel right. For a couple months, I had been dealing with what felt like a minor hot spot below the ankle - an irritation caused by friction. I had been keeping the area covered and putting antiobiotic ointment on it, and while I never seemed to fully kick it, I never really felt it while I was running; rather, I'd notice it when I came to a stop or was wearing work shoes.

Th - 0. I woke up and basically couldn't put any pressure on the foot. Emily got me some ibuprofen, I iced my foot in bed for 30 minutes, took a shower, got dressed, walked around gingerly until the pain eased enough to put on my shoes, and biked to work. By the end of the day it was feeling better, but there was also a lot of swelling and I knew I wasn't getting past this one that easily. Not a hot spot, apparently.

F - 0. Saw Dr. Pribut, who is a real pleasure to work with. I also have had good experiences addressing foot issues (I have a history of getting weird infections in my feet) with Dr. Spector, but his office is a little tougher for me to get to these days. Dr. Pribut diagnosed it as a tendon strain - specifically, the peroneus brevis tendon. It had been aggravated for a while, and I guess it was just a matter of time until it acted up.

I have had one bad tendon strain prior to this - in 2006, I believe. It was in the lower leg and hurt like hell; I thought for sure it was a stress fracture. It took in the ballpark of 10 days to 2 weeks to heal. This one? We'll see. We tried stabilizing it with an ankle brace, but I could still feel it a little ... so Dr. Pribut fit me with a boot (a first for me).

Right now the plan is to keep the boot on basically all the time (except for when sleeping, obviously), give it a little test on Friday, and go from there.

"To succeed at anything, you need passion. You have to be a bit of a fanatic. If you would move anyone to action, you must first be moved yourself. To instigate, said Emerson, you must first be instigated." Doc Sheehan