Backing Off

The best thing about training for a marathon is seeing yourself improve as you climb towards your goal. Ever since I joined cross country in high school I had people giving me weird looks whenever I talked about running in a positive light. Who in their right mind would want to run by choice? In my sophomore year, my favorite cross country workout was interval miles. You had ten minutes to run a mile. The amount of time you had left out of the ten minutes when you are done running the mile is the amount of time you have to rest. As soon as the ten minutes is up, you start the next mile. We did three to five of these at a time. Every week I had a goal to beat my own mile time on at least one of the miles. I got my time down to 6:20 once and have never beat it since, but I will never forget how I felt after that mile. It was better than a runner's high. I felt like I could do anything after that.

Now the next goal is to continually beat my distance. Last week we ran ten miles. This week it was back down to eight. This coming week we are supposed to run twelve. That will be the longest run I have ever gone in my life. It will almost be a half marathon. There is just one problem.

While running the eight miles yesterday I did something bad to my foot. I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with it, just that it hurts. The beginning of my run was painful already, because my shins still felt tight and achy. I tried convincing myself that I just had to stretch them, it wasn't shin splints. That self talk didn't work out so well, especially when I stopped to stretch them and they felt worse than before. Finally I stopped and tied my shoes tighter. They felt loose around the arch of my foot. Surprisingly, it helped a lot. Within a quarter mile after tightening my shoes, my shins felt better.

However, the closer I got to the end of my run the more my feet started to bother me, especially my right foot. My toes started to go a little numb. I was tired of stopping to fix my shoes so I kept pressing on. By the last two miles I was picking up speed a lot. Kal had told me earlier that his time was 64 minutes for eight miles. I wanted to run at the same pace as him and I was determined to do it. I felt like I was flying until the very final stretch, because the course ended on an unhill. My foot was hurt a lot and I couldn't feel my toes. I finished at 65 minutes.

When I hit the eight mile mark I removed my shoes. I'll admit, I was a little worried that my toes had turned purple from cutting off the circulation, but they were still a rosy red when I took them out of the shoes. I walked a little under a quarter mile back home with bare feet to let them stretch out a bit. This probably was a bad idea, because the second I started walking without the shoes the inner arch of my right foot felt like it was cramping, only without a knot in it. I walked slower, but didn't put the shoes back on. I am a firm believer in walking off the pain. Again, dumb idea.

It has been a day and a half since I ran, and my foot still hurts. I let my mom see my foot today and she said, "Your foot is swollen! Put some ice on that!" I had already iced it three times that day. I may be walking my "run" on Monday. I'm stobborn when it comes to pressing through pain, but I don't want to ruin all chances of running the whole marathon by being an idiot right now. I am starting to feel stressed just writing about backing off, so I will end here. I hope this is just a small injury and that it will heal quickly.