The pandas are skating. On very thin ice.

So far this year I’ve only run about 8 weeks and amassed less kilometres than I often run in one week. The running I missed was eating at me for a long time but I’m past that point now. I can’t be concerned with lost running time, my main concern is getting my foot better to run.

It’s been 10 days since my last run. I was ordered to take another six weeks off because I was still feeling pain and my injury was not getting better while I continued to run. The swelling at my toe joint went down after a few days off and the pain is subsiding. However, the discomfort I get when I flex my 4th toe is still there. That is the problem that aggravates my foot and beats up my metatarsal head.

Six weeks of no running should help heal the damage but I’m not convinced it will fix the mechanical problem. I’ve had a few doctors tell me to take time off running and cross-train and see where I am in six weeks. I took four months off already this year and although that yielded the healing I needed it didn’t address the underlying problem.

Taking a big chunk of time-off and avoiding any surgery or injections was the best case scenario for me. I have no regrets going that route but now that I realize the problem isn’t going away with rest I’d like to delve deeper into other options.

On Tuesday I have an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon and I’ll discuss possible paths I can take. This is a weird injury that has experts stumped and it’s hard to say what will get me back to normal. There are things that are helping but at the end of the day the injury is too profound and the pain comes back.

Throughout the last four weeks of running I always felt I was teetering on the edge of good fitness or injury. While my workouts continued to trend in the right direction there were times when my foot felt as though it was going to really flare up. It never got too bad (like how it felt in January) but it wasn’t improving.

My main goal was to get ready for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Oct 22. I had everything plotted out and wanted to start marathon specific training by the beginning of August. Even though I was making progress I could tell that my foot wasn’t ready for marathon training and it didn’t seem as though I was going to turn that corner if I continued to run 110-140km/week. That is why I reached out to my medical team to see if anything could be done to get over the injury. Better to take care of things sooner than later now that I know my foot isn’t ready for running.

On June 17th I raced the Waterfront 10k and ran about as well as expected. I ran 31:51, about 2.5 minutes slower than last year on the same course. Going into the race I figured if I was within 2 minutes it would have been a great result and outside of 3 minutes would have been a little discouraging. Even though I only got in less than 8 weeks of running it was enough to give me that feeling of being in decent running shape again.

The past year I’ve had my fair share of injuries and sometimes I think that there are enough signs that point towards taking a step back and stop chasing big goals in the marathon. I know I’ve said this before but if it wasn’t for running 2:10:55 at Fukuoka seven months ago I’m sure the self-doubt would be much, much higher. That result lets me know that I’m still capable of achieving my goals, as long as I can, you know, actually run.

Other than this damn toe joint injury and mind-numbing cross-training life is good. Watching Le Tour, Canadian Nationals this weekend and enjoying the summer with the family.