Broken Foot Blues

My middle son and I had a great weekend. It was the peak of our training which means that we've done all the hard work now we just had easy workouts and rest for the next ten days before our half-marathon. As you may have heard me mention, the Thanksgiving Point Half-Marathon was this years "A" Race which means everything else I've been doing has been more or less practice leading up to this - even Disney Princess. The race snakes through the Tulip Festival - one of the most amazing garden displays imaginable. Avery and I have been talking, scheming, planning and dreaming about this since November.

Now this.

After running 13.1 miles on Saturday we went for a bike ride on Sunday (7.22 miles of rolling hills, I hit 25mph! Yay!) and then headed straight to the pool where I swam 500m. 

Things were good. This hellish month long flare-up had finally stopped, I was resting for my half and excited about the triathlon we were doing in 8 weeks. Life was pretty darn perfect.

Monday morning I woke up sore. We'd ran a 6 of the 13.1 miles downhill with 2200ft elevation loss and then a 621 ft elevation gain... of course I was sore - even with great form, that's punishing. I decided to go to the hot tub and soak a bit. When I was walking across our stoop there was a loud "CRACK" like a stick being broken and I collapsed screaming. It felt like the top of my foot exploded from the inside. I was doing nothing... didn't turn my ankle, slip, slide, slap or stomp. Just gentle careful walking.

Within an hour or so I realized I needed to get to a doctor. X-rays confirmed a stress fracture in my 4th metatarsus cuboid bone area.  It had likely been cracked for some time (possibly since January by everyone's best guess) and it just finally snapped. We splinted me up with a soft cast and I set off to the sports medicine orthopedist. He looked at my X-rays and noted that the bone was separating a bit and I needed a CAT scan right away to determine if I need surgery and a screw installed in the bone to hold it together. 

So now I wait. Praying really, really hard I don't need surgery but knowing that if I do, it'll be okay.

I'm off my feet for 8 weeks. No Half-Marathon, No triathlon and the mid-summer events are in jeopardy too as I don't know what kind of mileage I'll be doing once this thing is sorted out. I do know, that some day down the road I'll be stronger then I am today and that I can't wait for that day to get here.

What I hadn't realized was how into all this we had become. On the couch I was surrounded by Run Like a Mother, Slow Fat Triathlete (great book regardless of your size and speed), Chi Running and Your First Triathlon. There were triathlon and exercise magazines on the side table, a race schedule by the computer and a training schedule dominating the wall. I turned on the TV to get my mind off of things and all the Tivo had on it was the Boston Marathon (Go, Kara! Hooray for Desiree!), the Women's Triathlon Championships, an XTerra race (drool, it's my BIG DREAM) and the 2009 Ironman in Kona. My email was packed with a days worth of running motivations, a training schedule for the week, newsletters about the local races and an email about packet pick-up for the race I'll be missing. 

Yeah, that didn't help.

And I thought, Okay, I'll just make some cards, play with my precious Bombshells, work on my sewing class... things will be fine. But that's not true either. To make a card I go through an incredible amount of stuff: stamps, ink, markers, pencil crayons, embossing folders, die cuts, printing, patterned paper, sewing, distressing, paper trimmer, adhesive, embellishments, glossy accents... you get the idea. And that stuff is all over my house in at least four different rooms (remember, my normal goal is to increase mobility). And I'm not decisive enough to be able to ask people to get me a certain few sheets of paper and call it good. I'm just not.

Ditto for sewing. You cut, sew iron repeat. I think my back would give out doing all these one-legged squats to get up and down like that. 

So I'll read, and educate and draw. Odds are good I'll play a lot of Farkle. I'll still probably be crap at answering email... not my strength. 

And very soon I'll be biking again (possibly this week if I don't need surgery and the swelling goes down enough that I can pedal with my heel) and then swimming in about a month. And sometime in June I'll get to run again. And start over, one step at a time. And get back to it.