If I Were a Race Horse I Would Have Been Put Down by Now

“If I were a race horse I would have been put down by now”, I texted my friend Coy of First in Philly.  If you know much about race horses, this is a sad but true statement.  Unfortunately when they become injured or can’t perform well anymore many times they are put to rest.  If they are lucky they find a nice home and someone to take care of them.  But, if they were habitually injured they’d be glue for sure!



Soapy Horse (stolen from my friend Coy's FB page). Thanks Coy!



I feel like an injured race horse.  Luckily for me no one is trying to put me out of my misery.  Maybe they should….not literally….but sometimes I wonder if it’s time to hang up the racing dreams.  But I really just can’t imagine doing that at all.  Plus I have delusions of living out the Dreamer story (injured race horse returns to former glory).  I can see the headlines now, "Habitually injured runner and triathlete Michael Weatherly breaks world record", or something like that!

My body drives me crazy. It literally revolts against me.  I get over one injury only to have a new one creep up out of nowhere.  Every time I make forward strides, something strikes and pushes me back again, but I keep moving forward.  I don’t stop.  I just try something else.

As most of you know I’ve been battling a hip injury for the last several months, but I’ve been a woman on a mission.  I have been going to ART (active release technique) therapy 1 to 2 times a week for two months, I have been eating better and losing weight, I have been stretching daily, I have been working out my core daily and I have seen HUGE improvements.  After my 22 miler, my left hip was a little sore, but it’s kind of worked itself out over the last few days.  Things have been going great…….

Then……out of the blue……LITERALLY.  I am walking across my bathroom floor when all of a sudden I have the most awful, burning, painful, cramping feeling in my right arch/heel.  OUCH!  Maybe it’s just a cramp………nope, still there an hour later, and another hour later, and the next morning.  When I wake up Wednesday morning I can’t put any weight on that foot.  It feels like someone sliced it open, pulled out the nerve and poured acid inside.  So many of you are automatically thinking plantar fascitis right?  That’s the same thing I thought when I had this two years ago.  Turned out to be Tarsal Tunnel syndrome; it’s just like carpal tunnel, but it’s in your foot.  You have a nerve that runs from you ankle into your heel which can get pretty inflamed.  When this developed the last time I had 3 cortisone injections in my foot (not fun) which didn’t help at all.  I ended up in a boot for 6 weeks and in tennis shoes and orthotics only for several months after that.  It finally healed and hasn’t given me any problems, until now! 

Seriously????  It’s 3 weeks til Disney.  I will say this came on much more suddenly than last time, so I’m hoping it’s just some kind of weird flare up that will go away as quickly as it came on.  And even as I’m writing this post, it has already improved some.  But, I took action right away.  I iced it immediately, took some ibuprofen, massaged it on the tennis ball and have been stretching my foot and calf every few hours for the last few days.  Tonight I go see my ART Dr. to see what he can do for me.

I do not want this to be another Hyvee Triathlon where 1 week from the event I get sidelined.  I can’t mentally deal with that.

Rest assured however, that I will be running the Disney Marathon.  Some way, somehow, it will happen!  Thanks alot for all of the great comments on my last post about my 22 miler by the way.  They are seriously so encouraging!

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to work so hard only to be habitually injured.  I feel like a whiner and a complainer and that’s totally not my style.  I ask myself all the time, am I just not tough enough???  Are these just minor things that other people just deal with, or am I just “special” in that I’m constantly developing some ridiculous new pain and injury.  My ART Doc and I are trying to get to the bottom of this mystery.

OK, on a positive note.  I lost another 1.4 pounds at Weight Watchers and reached my goal weight this week!  (well I came within 2 pounds of my goal weight, which is all that is required by Weight Watchers to get back to Lifetime status).  This means I get reimbursed for the 10 remaining weeks of our At Work Series!  Woot!  Money in the Bank!  That’s a total of 12.2 pounds overall!