A day after being on a high, having completed a 20 miler with the last five miles under race pace, I was quickly brought back down to Earth. At first, I thought the bruise on my right foot was annoying, but nothing to be concerned about. My feet hurt a little all the time during training, so this was nothing new. Then again, the pain was in a new spot, back in the arch of my right foot, not across the ball as usual. Three days later, while running 5:30am 400m intervals, the pain became intense at split number 9 and I had to stop (I was supposed to do 12). I jogged home easy and figured I'd be fine. It only hurt bad during the high-intensity of the sprints. A few days of only bike riding and I'd be fine for my weekend 15-miler.
Sunday came and the pain was mostly gone. I set out to just log the miles slow and easy, nothing to strenuous. I had my last 20-miler coming a week later and then the taper for the race. I didn't want miss a long run at this critical juncture. I only made it a mile and a half before the steadily increasing pain caused me pull up lame. Determined to get some benefit from the day, I turned the 15-mile run into a 10-mile walk. This was a mistake. My forced walk/limp produced an unusual gait and was something new for my legs. The 2.5 hour trek resulted not only in a more-bruised foot, but also an extremely tight hamstring on Monday morning.
I'm taking the entire week off from running and will see how things are again this weekend. I am extremely discouraged at this point. Last spring, a very similar series of minor injuries kept forcing me to put off workouts until I had missed nearly two weeks of training a month before my scheduled race. I tried to come back too fast, got hurt worse, and dropped out. This particular feeling of deja vu is horrible. Stupid feet.
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