The Long Road Back

Alright, I think it's about time that I got back on here and filled the blog-o-sphere in on my prolonged absence since the San Antonio debacle in November... As I mentioned at the time, I had planned to take two weeks, regroup and then make a 'run' at a January marathon. Unfortunately, just over a week after my experience in San Antonio, while vacationing in Mexico I managed to hurt my foot while playing (barefoot) football with a bunch of little kids. At the time, I thought that I had broken the little toe on my right foot, and knowing that there isn't much that you can do for a broken little toe, I went on with my days, thinking that a 3-4 weeks off would do the trick and I'd be back to normal. Within 24 hours, however, I was greeted with this:

My foot was extremely swollen, black and blue and tender to the touch. I've never broken a toe before so I assumed that this was normal and spent the next week swimming in the ocean and icing my foot, beverage in hand.

7 weeks pass and I still could not run more than 10-15 feet without pain, so I finally go to get an xray and the prompting of my good friend Dr. Ryan Gebhardt. Turns out that I did indeed fracture my toe but I did right in the joint space (where the toe connects to the foot), apparently making recovery much tougher. Here's the x-ray, although I can't tell ANYTHING from it.

I hate going to doctors and still to this day have not done anything further about it, but on February 1st, after about 10 weeks off, I decided to give running a shot again. I made it about 3mi that day with portions of walking scattered throughout.

In my downtime, I got back into swimming and biking (and other forms of non-impact cardio (like the elyptical machine) and actually have managed to get myself into relatively good shape... at least partially. While I can push reasonable power on the bike and my swimming is coming along nicely, I still managed to gain about 12-14lbs while not running. That said, I am the heaviest now that I have been in about 9 year (grad school). My typical race weight has been at 165-168lbs and as of tonight I weigh-in at just under 179 lbs. This is the low-point.

On the upside I'm starting to feel like I am going to be able to comeback and get to running again. While slowly ramping up mileage (I ran 15-17mi/wk for the past two weeks), I joined the Wednesday night run at the Runner's Roost (the shop that I will be racing for this year) for the first time. I managed to complete about 6.25mi at around 7min/mi pace w/o much foot pain. Aerobically I was fine, but it's funny how my old joints just go to crap when I give them a break for awhile. Increasing mileage, won't be too bad aerobically since I have stayed pretty fit, but getting the joints and muscles back in working order while babying the foot and trying to lose all of these extra pounds is going to make for an interesting journey back to the starting line.

I do plan to race Tri/running again this year although I am waiting to see how the foot progresses before outlining an entire schedule. I'm hoping to have a solid season, with the majority of racing aimed towards the back half of the season, including another attempt at the 'six-minute marathon' at a late Fall/early Winter marathon in the Oct-Dec time-frame. I think I'll keep the Blog going throughout simply to document the road to recovery and hopefully (one day) peak racing fitness. Hopefully you'll check in once in awhile too to see how things are going! Happy training!