Cracks In The Plan

Training for Ironman Arizona had been going very well.  I was definitely growing tired of the long training hours, but that was to be expected.  It was four weeks before the big race and I doing a fifteen mile long run with two speedy friends of mine, Christy and Erin.  We decided to run from Scottsdale to Tempe Town Lake and check out a local triathlon happening that day.  Around mile ten, we were running over the Curry hill, and I felt an awful pain on the top of my foot.  We stopped for a few minutes and I tried to work it out a bit, having no idea what it was.  We continued on and completed the run.  When I got home, I could hardly step on my foot.  No matter which way I looked at it, this didn't appear to be good.  I iced, taped, put compression socks on, and elevated it.  I didn't know what else to do.

Making the best of a crappy situation.

Tuesday I got into the doctor, but the x-ray didn't show anything.  He referred me to do a podiatrist.  It got, what seemed like progressively better from Sunday-Thursday, when I was able to get into Brandon, my awesome PT, at Endurance Rehab.  Because it seemed to be improving, I was optimistic; Brandon, not so much.  His advice was simple, go to the podiatrist.  The following Monday I went to the podiatrist and he decided to do an ultrasound.  Pretty quickly, he found a stress fracture on the second metatarsal.  While trying to hold back the tears, I asked if I could run a marathon in what was now less than three weeks away.  He laughed.  He proceeded to tell me I might be able to run a portion of it, but I would most likely break it all the way through.  I would be looking at six months to a year of being injured.

 Around the same time, I had taken my bike in to Tribe to get some TLC and new cables before the big day.  I wanted this done a couple weeks before the race in case anything odd surfaced.   I got a phone call on the Monday after the stress fracture occurred.  I don't remember much of the conversation, but the main point was that there were cracks in my frame and the bike was not ride-able anymore. Wait, what?!

My poor Trek. 

In a matter of two days, I had a crack in my foot and a crack in my bike.

Everyone had an opinion and they gave it to me.  You can still finish, you can walk.  Truth was, I didn't want to walk and I didn't want to just finish.  It was a lot to mentally digest and I didn't make any decisions right away.  In the end I decided that the long term effects of running the marathon weren't worth it.  Today, it's easy to look back and know I made the right decision.  It's a long road back from a fractured foot.  Longer than anyone is honest about.  If I had a dollar for every person who said I would be good as new in six weeks, I'd be a millionaire.  Maybe I'm a slow healer, but six weeks later, it still hurt to walk without the boot.

I strongly believe that things happen for a reason, even when they aren't the way we had hoped.  I had a lot of time on my hands to dwell on why I thought this happened.  I've always tried to do too many things at once and I don't like missing out on things.  Instead of spending more time resting and recovering from all the training I was doing, I was trying to keep up with my social life.  I hardly ever said no to something.  I thought I could do it all, I wanted to do it all.  I continued to burn the candle at each end until something gave; unfortunately, in the form of a fractured bone in my foot.  My boyfriend tried to encourage me to sleep more, take naps, stay home and rest, etc.  Yeah, yeah, I knew what I needed.  Apparently I also liked to learn things the hard way.  Let's hope I'm past the need for such wild adventures in the future. 

Out for a cruise with the boot.