Oh I guess I have to put your flat feet on the ground

Do you ever get those days when you have to ask what day of the week it is?  I had to look at my watch this morning to tell me it’s Wednesday.  This seems to happen when I’m injured and I don’t have a schedule that distinguishes one day from another.  Usually I have workouts on particular days, a long run once a week and core on specific days.  Now I just seem to go from one day to the next.  What’s on for today?.. try and use a stationary bike, do core, repeat.

So today when I my watch informed me it was Wednesday and not Tuesday I was happy, one more day closer to a fixed bone!  The opposite was true when I was injured in the spring.  Because I desperately wanted to race at the Olympic trials if I thought it was the 8th and figured out it was the 7th on my calendar I was pumped that I got an extra day to get healthy to race. 

I keep thinking back to the morning when I broke my foot.  I was running through McMaster on my way to the trails and I went a slightly different way than I normally do to avoid a crowded area where students wait for buses.  This particular route has similar footing, they are both paved asphalt, so it’s not as if I was taking any more risk this way. After I broke my foot I thought that perhaps if I had gone the regular way this would not have happened. The reality is that breaking my foot could of happened anywhere and there was obviously some underlying problem that caused my 5th metatarsal to break with a simple ankle inversion.  A healthy bone would not of broken that easily.

My foot problem goes back over two years ago when I twisted my ankle warming up for a race in Germany and I noticed that I hurt the outside of my foot rather than the ankle itself.  That day I felt pain in every step of my 1500m although once I put back on my training shoes it was fine.  Throughout the rest of that track season I would feel a slight pain now and then, but nothing that ever stopped me from running.  The pain on the outside of my foot got fairly painful from time to time over the past two and half years with the pain peaking at the end of my 2007 track season when I was diagnosed with a stress fracture and consequently took three weeks off (I would of taken two weeks off regardless).  I figured all the time I took off from running this past summer while I was x-training would of healed it up.  I remember thinking that it felt quite strong this fall but, a few inversions through the past two months and a very slight pain reappeared.  I didn’t take too much stock in it because the pain was minimal and easily manageable.  I never thought the signs pointed to such a weakness where a simple ankle inversion would cause a break.

My right calf has atrophied quite a bit and is noticeably smaller than my left just by looking at them from the front.  I have exercises for my quads, hamstrings, glutes and hips although my calf can’t do much without my foot hurting.  In the last couple of days I have been able to dorsiflex a bit so I’ll sit and watch TV and move my foot a couple inches up and down to at least use my calf.  Let the rehab begin.

Fat foot and fat toes (a couple days after the break). Where did the tendons in my foot go?

I got the tendons back but lost some calf.