Friday, October 30, 2009

The Board Room

The beautiful thing about laptops is that you can blog from just about anywhere. Like right now I'm sitting in the Alaska Airlines Board Room, awaiting a flight to Newark, NJ. The Board Room is a new place for me, and I must say I could get used to it. I believe that it's typically reserved for First Class passengers and frequent flyer types. Andrea managed to get her paws on a couple of complimentary passes, so now I'm sipping a complimentary Bloody Mary and blogging away in a very comfy leather chair. I'm not a big fan of flying, thus me sipping a Bloody Mary, but I could get used to this.

Anyhoo, why are we going to Newark, NJ? Alaska had a direct flight available to Newark from Seattle. We're actually headed to Philadelphia to see Pearl Jam, and Newark's only an hour and a half away. We're going to catch the final two shows ever at the Spectrum as Pearl Jam closes it down for good. Oh, I can't wait. Rumor has it that the 11pm venue curfew has been lifted for Saturday night's show, and there's talk that the show could push into the wee hours of Sunday morning with special guests galore. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it's so dang hard.

Let's get back on track. This is a running blog after all. My foot is feeling much better and allowing me to run. Last week and this week will be in the 40+ range. My foot is like 95% healed, but those last 5% are sure taking there sweet time to get right. Nonetheless, it's no longer slowing me down and it feels good to be upping the mileage.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

You've Got To Be Kidding Me

Right now as I type, my foot is immersed in a bucket of ice water. I know what you're thinking. Is Brian even running enough right now to be hampered with an injury? Sadly my friends the answer is NO, not even close. But the point is that I want to be running that much.

Unfortunately I have been set back these past two weeks by some bizarre ailments. So the week leading up to our Nicaraguan vacation and the whole time we were gone, I hardly ran. Typically I take a break in October or early November, but the way our vacation was timed and the fact that I had no upcoming races, I opted for a slightly earlier break. My intention of course was to be back running strong by the time I'm normally cutting back for a little r&r.

The problem is that two weeks ago, after running moderately hard a couple of back to back days, I was struck by an incredible pain in my big toe. After a quick inspection and a self diagnosis I pegged it to be an ingrown toenail. Having never had an ingrown toenail, I had to turn to the internet and friends' experiences for advice. For two days, I hobbled around on it and even tried to run through about the most excruciating pain I've ever felt. I thought for sure that a trip to the doctor was in order, that is until I finally was able to drain it. Without going through the gory details, I'll just say that once the pressure under the nail was alleviated the pain went away immediately. I felt like I'd really dodged a bullet and got back to running, making up for lost time.

So now cut to this week. I was steadily building mileage up through Thursday, when on my way home I was suddenly aware of a tenderness on the outside of my foot. Ahhh, what now? I took Friday off from running and spoke to our in store doc as soon as I arrived to work. Turns out that because I was overcompensating for my toe injury, I've now aggravated my peroneal tendon by running and walking on the outside of my foot.

I'm only 31. I'm not old enough to be dealing with such setbacks, or am I? Without bragging about it, I've always taken great pride in my ability to run injury free. Hopefully this is just a little stretch of tough luck and I'll be back to training in no time. In the meantime, I'll keep my foot numbed in ice and my fingers crossed.