Since September 10, 2012, I’ve wanted to write this post. I’ve wanted to talk about how I’m finally becoming uninjured. Though I did not know it, September 9 was when I broke the bone in my foot fueling the cyst in my foot and making me have a double unrelated running injuries in my foot.
I want to say that I haven’t exactly been the best at explaining things nor did I want to broadcast my foot issues on the internet. Especially because my injury did not deal really deal with running and I could have 10 bizillion people giving me advice when they knew barely anything of my issues. It was just the sad event that everything came into place in the once area of my body I didn’t need to be injured…
My foot.
Two weeks prior to my fracture, I had been having weird issues. My leg and foot was tight and never really felt that great. It felt injury provoking so I talked to my coach, cut down my miles and analyzed what was going on. We thought it was probably a mild case of plantar fasciitis, so I did anything you do to treat that, cut miles, ice stretch and it seemed to tame down except when I was running…I raced twice and both times pain surged during my race and then was done as soon as I was done running.
September 9th, I did a long run (at that time) of 10 miles. The first two miles were not pretty then the pain seemed to clear up. I finished the last 8 easily and then went around my merry way. I thought the pain had cleared up.
Not that I had broken a bone in my foot. My muscle had ripped off my bone a few days prior and therefore had more run to chill…and therefore wasn’t tight anymore.
OH and therefore had created a small crack in my bone.
A crack that if it had been less then a millimeter lower would have resulted in a Jones fracture (which takes about a year…and surgery…to heal).
So when the doctor looked down at my foot and said…swollen and bruised, bet you broke it, I was pretty smug. Still I got the MRI done and figured it was a bruise at the worse…after all since then I had run 2 more ten milers and it had not hurt but just felt like a bruise.
My heal was still pretty tight, but now I was worrying about my pinkie toe. At this point I wasn’t running at all and hoping a few days would allow the bruise to clear up. I could have run on it but I thought running now is counterproductive…why not wait a week when the bruise was healed. So I ellipticalled, I iced and even got a deep tissue massage.
I remember the conversation I had when the doctor called me very clearly, I was being “good” and cross training on the elliptical. I had begged them to call with my MRI results several times before the weekend and he did. He said the daunting news that sent me into a tailspin.
You do have a small bone crack Hollie and it is best that you don’t run for 6-8 weeks.
I had always heard of rumors of runners being able to run on broken bones but thought…how on earth could they run on something broken and not realize it? How on earth could someone be pregnant and not realize it? I would have never thought that I had a broken bone when I finished a 10 mile run in little to no pain.
So on September 14, I watched in the gym as my entire senior year of cross country went away. The year I had spent 10 months training for. The year I was going to nationals. I had the small crack in my bone, and I had the weird heel pain that we still thought to be plantar fasciitis, who knew the issues that I would later be told is giant cyst the size of a golf ball in my heel.
Stay tuned for the multiple parts.