Giveaway winner and the Foot.

First off, the fun stuff: The winner of the Words to Sweat By™ giveaway is Emily! Congrats!!!

Second, the not-so-fun stuff. I've been having some ankle pain since mid-February when I was training for the NYC Half. It would show up about halfway through my long runs and by the end of 10 or 12 miles, my right foot seemed a little swollen. I've had a couple ankle sprains on that foot and it felt like the joints were a little loose, so I RICE'd it up  and hoped it would go away. It didn't, and actually felt like it got worse, to the point where I was barely able to put weight on it. I continued to RICE and took some time off from running after the half, but the pain never fully subsided. After last weekend's disastrous Scotland 10k, where I was in sufficient pain to merit a number of walk breaks and grimaces, and saw splits on my watch that I haven't seen since my run/walk days, I decided that it was more than just a tendonitis issue, which was my previous hypothesis. I had an inkling in the back of my mind that it might be a stress fracture because of the nature of the pain, but I didn't think I had done all that much to injure myself to that degree. I've always been cautious about my mileage increases and pay pretty good attention to my body, but I guess I got overzealous with training for the half, making my goal time, and getting faster that I discarded that little voice in the back of my mind that kept reminding me to rein it in a little and not get overexcited. 


If you saw my ridiculous/upset posts on facebook yesterday, you know that I was significantly more upset than I thought I would be about the diagnosis (and the terrible fail of a doctor I saw). It hit home how much I have really come to enjoy running - something I never thought I would say in a million years. So I think that this injury has a definite silver lining: it has shown me how important having physical activity is in my life, and I know that once I'm cleared to run again it will become significantly more prioritized. I guess that sometimes we have to have something taken from us to realize how valuable it is, but I know that I'm going to definitely not take my physical conditioning that I've built up in the last year for granted. Besides, I have to fit into a wedding dress in six (!!!!) months so I can't let myself go too much. So on that note, here is a picture of a cat with cheese on its face. Cause that's about how I feel today.