After a Week of Rest

Over the course of the past week, the dull pain on the top of my foot hasn’t really changed much. I have been icing it twice a day and made it out for three good workouts on the exercise bike and one on the elliptical machine. When I use the elliptical machine, I feel like I’m going backwards and really don’t like it very much.

Since I made the decision to take a week off, I have been anxious to see how the foot would feel during and after my first run. Of course throughout this week I gave lots of consideration on how I would proceed with my training. My weekly mileage has been above 20 miles per week for the past nine weeks and the last three weeks have been above 28 and topped out at 31 miles. I would like to start back up with something close to 20 miles in Week 14. Given the consistent mileage and with only one week off, I think that is reasonable. I haven’t gotten into real specific planning because, I realized that any plans I would come up with might become academic, based on how I felt when I started back up again.

If I ran without feeling a thing in the foot, I would be looking to get back to 30 miles per week almost immediately. On the other hand, if I fell over in pain, my plan would look much different and maybe not look like much like a training plan at all. I suspected that the reality would be somewhere in between.

I ran 3 easy miles on the treadmill at the Y this morning (Friday 2/1/08). As I expected, the pain was present, but certainly bearable. It felt very much like the two runs I did after I first noticed the alleged injury. So there is no dramatic announcement of either triumph or despair. Instead, I’m left with just enough encouragement to proceed with the assumption that there will be no more stoppages. I’m also left with the possibility that my week off was unnecessary.

At this point, who knows what the story is with the foot. It could be a bone problem or tendonitis or even a compressed nerve. In any event, I suspect that my overall mileage increase was probably OK, but the Long Run increases (as a % of total mileage) might have been too high.

I need to get my mind right. Instead of constant thought of injury, I need to get back to thinking about things like pacing, strengthening and overall mileage. I look forward to a solid week of running to flush out the doubt and tentativeness.