First injury

After completing my first 70.3 I was determined to redeem myself in my upcoming half-marathon the next month.  I really wanted to be closer to the 2-hour mark, if not under.  I trained and I trained and even though I started to feel a slight pain in my right foot I just kept running through it.  Race day came and the weather was nice and crisp and as I was running through each mile I saw my splits going down.  I was running a great race.  I finished at 2:08.  I was extremely happy with that.  I thought that now I would be able to rest up through the holidays and start my training in earnest after the New Year.  Wrong!!  My friends and training buddies started training for a full marathon in Austin, Texas.  As much as I was nervous about running 26.2 miles I thought to myselft that if I want to do a full Ironman one day I might as well see if I could even run a marathon!

So training started ramping up again, and even though I was only adding one mile to my long runs on weekends, I was not getting nearly enough running in during the week.  My longest run ended up being 19 miles when I realized that something had to give.  My foot was burning by the time my runs were finished and no matter how much I tried to "roll it out", my foot hurt even walking.  But being stubborn, I decided it was my shoes that were the problem so I bought new shoes and thought that would solve the problem.....nope.  My next run was only 13 miles and on mile 10 of that run my foot was on FIRE!!!  It was then that I realized that something was really wrong with my foot and decided to go the doctor.

Sure enough I had a stress fracture on my 3rd metatarsal.  No running and I was placed in a boot for four weeks.  And being that I did not want to ruin my upcoming triathlon season just so I could run one race, I listened to the doctor's orders.  Although let me tell you, it was so hard to sit on the sidelines and cheer for everyone when I wanted to be running in that marathon with my friends.  But I wore my boot everywhere and did not run until he gave me the go ahead (about 8 weeks).  I finally got the all clear and was able to run again, allbeit in short and easy distances so as not to injury the foot again.  It's taken awhile to get my conditioning back, but I'm so happy not to have a lingering injury issue and I have learned my lesson about proper training!