Two steps forward....SIX steps back??

Remember the foot? Oh man....

It had been feeling better the past few days, but on Thursday afternoon it just started hurting SO bad, so I scheduled a doctor appointment for Friday afternoon and they took a look at it. Apparently the doc didn't get the point that I hadn't been running at all lately, but that's alright. They took an x-ray of the foot just in case, and everything looked healthy so she ruled out a stress fracture. That's always tricky though, because sometimes it doesn't really show up on x-ray...really a bone scan is a way to go but she said that "it's more cumbersome." Ok....

She also said it may be a neuroma, but it's very unusual to see it in the young population. So really she didn't know what it was. I had seen Todd earlier that day for a previously scheduled appointment too, and he had his own theory for why it has been hurting. All of the exercises that I have been going through to straighten my alignment basically get me off my heels and put me on the balls of my feet. To do this effectively, however, I need to be bending at my ankles, which is something Todd noticed that I wasn't doing when we were going through the exercises. By not bending there, I was keeping the shin muscles inactivated and putting more stress on the plantar muscle to keep myself in proper alignment. And he was right....because I felt better after I worked with him.

At any rate, I've really been babying the foot since then and it has been progressively getting better. The knee has also been on its best behavior lately too, so that's a good sign. It's only a matter of time before I'm out there again.

And in case you were wondering, the picture is from a local 5K this past weekend - the inaugural Michigan Brewing Company Beer Run 5K, which actually started inside the brewery. No word on how many people actually made it out of there...