Do what I say not what I do… right?! Why is it that most of us are just not that good at coaching ourselves? Could it be that we under estimate our aches and pains? Maybe we think we are invincible: never been injured, never will be. I’m not sure but I do know that when I have some pain, I ignore it. Shame on me.
Here is my excuse which Ted pretty much nailed the other morning when he said…”When I hurt myself I know it. I can’t run. When you get hurt, it’s never that clear cut.” Boy is he right! I get aches and pains that don’t seem to last. I’ve been able to get away with NOT icing, very little rest of the area in question, and no anti-inflammatory medicine. Now something has happened and I’m not sure what to do.
It’s almost taper time for the Boston Marathon, April 21st is race date. My last long run is scheduled for this weekend but there is an issue. Thursday during my tempo run, during the last mile, a pain in my right foot almost took me down. My entire leg felt weak. I lopsidedly jogged home with Zoey. Now this is the tricky part…. When I didn’t run, just walking, the foot felt ok. I decided to see what was up by trying to finish a mile on the treadmill. No go. The pain came back.
As of Friday and after 70 successful minutes on the elliptical, my foot feels ok. I can stand on my toes, no pain when walking…so what do I do? Do I rest it by simply doing HOURS on the elliptical and skipping that last long run? Do I go out for a run and see how far I can go before it hurts (if I can go at all)? I haven’t tried to run a step since Thursday morning. I don’t want to find out I can’t.
The pressure of the marathon is on but I don’t want to do more damage and ruin my entire year, after all I made it into the NYC marathon and I want to be 100% in November with out ANY question. Yes, the Doctor has been called and an appointment made for Tuesday. I feel lame (no pun intended) going to the doctor. How if nothing is wrong? Maybe it’s just those pre-race nerves and “ghost” pains?
I guess I’ll eat cookies and see if that makes me feel better. What would you do?
TKO’s
Who doesn’t love the Oreo cookie? In the book by Thomas Keller “Bouchon Bakery” he declares his love for TKOs and their likeness to the Oreo cookie Total Knock Outs?!
A rich dark chocolate wafer cookie sandwiches a creamy sweet white chocolate filling.
Make the filling first:
- 4.4 oz white chocolate, chopped
- .5 oz unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
Melt the chocolate and butter together, stirring constantly. Heat the cream to a simmer. Pour warmed cream over the melted chocolate-butter and whisk to combine. Pour into a storage container and refrigerate for 4 hours or until completely chilled.
Make the chocolate shortbread wafer *These are the ingredients I used. For the original recipe, you’ll have to check out the book
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup + 2 TBS whole wheat flour
- 1 1/4 cup Hershey Special Dark Chocolate Drinking Cocoa
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 8 oz unsalted butter – room temperature
- 2 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
In a small bowl, sift both flours with the cocoa and baking soda.
In the bowl of a standing mixer, add the butter and mix at medium speed until smooth. Add salt then add sugar. Mix until fluffy. Scrape sides.
Add the flour mix in 2 additions just until combined.
Turn the dough onto wax paper, wrap and chill for 2 hours, until firm.
Heat oven to 325 F. Line baking sheets with parchment.
Use your favorite cookie cutter, roll out the dough, about 1/8” thick and make an even number of cutouts.
Bake for 15 – 17 minutes. Allow to cool completely.
Place about 1/4 tsp. or so of filling in the middle of half of all the wafers. Top with another wafer.
Enjoy!
Are you dunker? If so, coffee? tea? or milk?
Do you slide the cookie apart and eat the filling first?
That’s rough about your pain. I think it would be better to be under-trained rather than hurt yourself more. It’s hard to say what’s best. Yeah, eat some of those delicious looking cookies. At least that’s an easy decision!
Thanks Tina. My test run today went ok. Not 100% and I’m sure if I tried a faster pace I would have been in trouble but I might give it another day and see what I can do by way of miles.
As someone who is sitting out Boston because I pushed through for my fall marathon, I would err on side of caution. That’s just the view from this side and believe me, I get where you are! Good luck with it
Thanks Amanda. I immediately thought of you and even wondered about emailing to ask you directly if you’d ever experienced such an issue. After my “test” run today, I’m leaning toward it being my own personal weird form of plantar fasciitis. I’m pretty sure within the next couple of days I can manage a very slow long run but I’m worried about what happens when I try a little faster pace. We’ll see what the doc says on Wed.
My vote is to play it safe and skip the long run! In the grand scheme of all your training, this one last long run is not going to make any difference in your marathon…unless, of course, you injure yourself further. At this point, the long run will really just help or hurt your mental game, so I say take the time off! (And yes, I speak from experience.)
I agree with you and you hit it exactly – it’s that mental game that I’m worried about. I need to be able to tell myself I pushed through so many long runs in order to overcome those tough last miles of Boston. But then my internal argument is that I don’t want to ruin my run in Tacoma, WA two weeks after.
I still think barefoot is how humans were meant to be. Perhaps the foot pain was caused by your shoes. If you strengthen your foot muscles then they will become less susceptible to injury. For the past 6 months I have been using Vibram FiveFingers. They are toe shoes that are halfway between shoes and socks. They fit great and have strengthened my foot muscles. I can walk around the office and not feel any discomfort. There’s a review of these shoes on my website. Check it out!