Fingers crossed!

Yesterday I got to thinking that my new orthotics should be ready. So I did some math from a letter from my insurance company and thought I should check up. Well, I was right! As soon as I got a call from my ortho's awesome assistant, Katy, I hightailed it over to the office to pick them up.

For some reason, when I looked at them, they weren't what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting some huge pad that would be right under the balls of my feet, but instead there's sort of a wedge that ends just there. I had brought a new pair of running shoes with me to make sure the things would fit inside, and they did. I drove home with some trepidation...I wasn't supposed to run until this coming Monday, but this was close enough to 2 weeks since my last sentence.

Still, I figured I should at least put the shoes on and wear them a bit to see how my feet felt in them. Weird is all I can say! I had some old orthotics, but they were all about arch support, and these new ones are intended to help take pressure off my metatarsal joints as well as support my inordinately high arches. In fact, my feet are quite different--the left one is longer and flatter, and the right one is shorter with an even higher arch. So I expected to feel that each foot was being supported in its appropriate arch spot. And they were. But there was also this weird pressure just before the ball of my foot. Since this was all news to my feet, I figured what the heck, let's just wear them.

After about 3/4 hour, I just HAD to go outside and try and trot a little to see how they felt. I had already tried this in my house with no issues, but that's not a real test. So I ran down my driveway and about 1/4 block. 2 weeks ago, my right foot would have hurt within about 10 steps, but it didn't hurt a bit. Still, I didn't want running on a sidewalk to be my first test, so I relaxed and thought I'd wait until today.

It was quite cold for May (still only 48) and very windy this morning, so I'd already made a plan to head to the Y so I could use the elliptical and the pool for running, and thought I'd use one of their good spin bikes to ride on as long as I was there. I first went to the indoor track, about to give my feet a real test, and I ran into a friend, Eric, that I haven't seen in weeks. He's training for his first Ironman and I have volunteered to be his mentor, and it was great to see him, and he said he'd accompany me on my maiden orthotic voyage. I was paranoid that if things started to hurt that I would break down and cry in front of him, but it turned out to be a good thing for me to run and talk with him so I wasn't always thinking about my foot. You want to know how to guarantee you will think about something? Tell yourself not to and then begin ;) Anyway, while my legs felt predictably heavy, my aerobic system was just fine and my foot felt fine! I could have kept going, but decided to err on the side of prudence and just do 20' today.

Eric and I talked some more and then I was on a schedule so we parted ways. I got on the elliptical, and while I had a little aching in the arch of my right foot, no pain in the toe, so I got 30' done there, and then got on the spin bike.

I think I averaged 105RPM the entire 2:30 on that thing, and felt pretty worked by it, so all good. Then I got in the pool and did 40' water running, and my legs were fried. Back at home, I iced the right foot, and it seems fine, so I hope to give it another short test of 15-20' tomorrow. Now I need to replan my schedule for next week assuming I can do about 20' of actual running per day, but I am happy to do it! I have also decided to fuck my original training plan from now through UMC and just do like I was going to do an IM only a bit more in the swim and bike departments. Not like I can do huge run volume anyway, but I hope to maintain about 5 hours a week. I am also going to move my long run to Wednesdays, because for the last 2 weeks it's been Thurs. long run, Friday huge swim, Sat. long bike 1 and Sun. long bike 2, and that is just stringing too many big workouts in a row. I got used to the long swim/long bike thing, so that's cool, moving the long run back one day should help me to recover a little before Friday rears its ugly head.

So the jury isn't out yet on my foot until I can run pain-free for at least 1.5 hours, but I will work my way back and hopefully if I continue doing the other things like icing and applying these NSAID pads and wearing appropriate footwear, perhaps I will lick this thing.

Meanwhile, I managed 7 hours of "running" this week, which isn't as much as I'd planned (8 hours), but still it's a lot, and if all goes well, I think I can be back to "pure" running in 3 weeks. I will say it now that down the road I may look back on all this and view it as a godsend, as I tend to think things happen for a reason. Perhaps if I had been full-out running now, I would have trashed myself into oblivion, but because I've been doing water running and elliptical (and I don't hold onto the machine), maybe just maybe, my aerobic run conditioning is there. Who knows?

It is funny to me that just a few days ago someone asked me if I was a marathoner, and I said yes (I didn't go into the whole triathlon thing), and she said I had that physique. Today someone told me I have a swimmer's physique . Now if I can just get someone to say I look like a hardcore cyclist, I'll be all set! Just some bright spots in an otherwise stressful week, I guess. Now if I can just get my new tri bike, I'll be all set!

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms and to your Moms.