On the mend?

It's been a long week.  Monday I took my first day off since mid-May.  My foot was really screaming and I made the wise choice.  I also took Tuesday morning off and ran an easy 5 miles with my marathon clinic crew for 5 easy miles Tuesday evening.  I'm also happy to report that two of my clinic participants successfully completed half-marathons this week-end in respectable times of 2:05 and 2:07.  Way to go Jess and Kirk!  I started wearing Superfeet Tuesday and keep them in all my shoes. Also I wear shoes all the time that I am awake.  When I'm sleeping I wear the night splint.  This combination seems to be working, along with the massive amount of stretching and massage I have incorporated into my day.  Wednesday I ran 8.5, Thursday I did a recovery run of 8 and Friday I tested the waters a bit with 12.2 mini progression run.  I did manage to run the second half faster than the first half, but fast is a relative term.  Saturday I ran a very easy six-miles and Sunday I was ready to really to test out the foot.  I warmed up with a couple of easy miles than "raced" the Como Classic 5k.  I was happy with the result, 19:02 unofficially, but the best news was how my foot felt.  After a short cool-down, I did a few laps around Lake Como for a total of 15.5 miles.  The foot tightened up around mile 12 and got a little achy, but nothing I couldn't handle.  The upcoming week is a big one, with lots of speed work and finishing up with 24 miles on Sunday morning.  I was planning on setting a weekly mileage PR, but lets see if the foot cooperates.

Even though progress has been made in regards to my foot, I can't leave well enough alone.  On Monday, I see a chiropractor who specializes in the Graston Technique.  They call it  "instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization."   So the doctor takes a tool that looks like a curved butter knife and starts breaking up scar tissue to allow the effected areas to move more freely.  He assures me its not too painful, but I'm a bit dubious about that claim.  Here are his selections of torture devices or erhh, I mean "tools" he will be using.  Anyway, it's worth a shot.

It was a disappointing week, so much so that most music on my runs was not sounding good.  However, at around mile 9 on Sunday there was a breakthrough; I forgot about the pain in my foot for a few moments and totally got lost in this song.  Not really sure why, but it worked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344ks1ieg

Happy Running!