My last post has a picture of my foot. Well, my foot inside of my new boot. The boot I’m now wearing while my foot heals. The injury occurred on April 17th. I’ve had a couple weeks to process what happened so its time to blog about it. So as to not bore you with my story in one long post I’ll break it up into a series (so I can bore you more than once). I’ll break it up this way:
Part I – Before (Training and Prep)
Part II – During (Pride is a Powerful Thing)
Part III – After (The Head Game)
Part IV – What Next
Training and Prep
Other than one year of running cross country in high school I’ve always been a recreational runner. My longest race was a half marathon, many many years ago. I’ve never been particularly fast and I’ve never run a lot of long runs. But about 10 years ago I decided that one of my “bucket list” items would be to run a full marathon AFTER I turned 50 years old. I guess my reasoning was that I wanted to stay healthy and figured that if I could do it after 50 that would mean that I was doing a good job of taking care of myself.
So I turned 50 about 18 months ago and started training for longer racing, my feet firmly planted in Asic Gels. And as usual, my recurring soft tissue problems started up again. A pain below one knee every time I went longer than 4 miles. And then a hamstring that would strain every time I ran faster than about 8:30 pace, among other one-time strains and pains. Last April, I tried to run our local 5K and ended up hobbling the last mile and a half because of the hamstring.
About that time, like so many others, I began to read about barefoot running, and Vibram Five Fingers, and then read “Born to Run”. By mid-summer I figured it was worth a try. I bought my first (of three) pairs of VFFs and started the transition. After a TMTS (Too Much Too soon) problem with my calves during the first month, I ran injury-free for 8 months. In January I signed up the Long Branch half marathon, scheduled for May 2nd (today). I started a 16 week program.
I would have preferred to run all of my training runs unshod. But due to weather conditions I had to do quite a bit in VFFs. Overall, probably about a third of my miles were unshod, the rest in VFFs. The longest I had run unshod was about 8 miles. My weekly long runs were up to 12 miles with no problems other than a blister or two. I had increased mileage slowly, following the 10% rule. I had been working on my core at least once a week, done some speed work, and cross training. In short I felt I was more ready for a race than any before. I was planning to run the half marathon in VFFs, although some day I’d like to run one barefoot.
As a warm up I signed up for my local 5K on April 17th. I considered running it barefoot but I ran the course the week before and the pavement was just too torn up from recent storms damage and construction. So rather than put the half marathon at risk I slipped on the VFF’s and planned to hold a steady pace using my Garmin watch, right at my PR pace. I didn’t want to do anything stupid. Since I was in really good shape and had run injury free for so long I figured I could comfortably just meet or slightly beat my PR.
My daughter was also running the 5K, her first race ever. She and I were the only VFF’ers in the 400+ runners. I said goodbye to her as the gun went off and started down the road. I settled into my pace quickly and concentrated on maintaining form. Head up. Midfoot strike, under my center of gravity. I rounded the first turn, feeling good. Confident.
And then everything started to change….
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Sorry to hear about your injury. I’m interested to read the rest of the story behind it (I ended up suffering extensor tendonitis from TMTS in my VFFs).
I’m going to jump the gun and assume it was a stress fracture, based on the boot. Tell me, how much direct sunlight do you get on a regular basis – wondering what your vitamin-D levels are like…
Regardless, I hope you have a speedy recovery!
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