Well, my training program for the 17 Oct. Abdingdon marathon, which is 7.5 weeks from now, has been derailed by injury. I didn't see this coming. It started as a minor bruise-like pain on the bottom of my left forefoot. I hadn't been training particularly hard - it started hurting 3.5 weeks ago during a 15-mile run at the end of a 40 mile week - so I initially thought that I'd just stepped on a rock wrong or something trivial like that. I ran about 30 miles in the following week, but ended that week's long run early because my foot started to hurt significantly after about four miles. In the last 2.5 weeks I've run only about four miles total. In an effort to cross-train, I tried a gym workout two days ago, on the stationary bike and cross-country ski machine, that I thought would not irritate my foot. Surprisingly it really did irritate my foot, which has since then been hurting worse than ever. So, after 2.5 weeks of essentially no running, my foot feels worse than ever.
I think what I have is called bursitis - an irritation in the padding of my forefoot. I'm just taking it day by day and hoping I can still run Abingdon, even if not in the time I'd been hoping for. I guess there's a lesson to be learned from this experience, which is to be more wary of seemingly minor aches and pains, and to try and build up my training more consistently and gradually. Although this injury occurred at the end of a moderate training week, the preceding weeks had involved irregular and inconsistent mileage (e.g. I had been tapering for a half-marathon 3-4 weeks before being injured, and then I ran a lot after the half-marathon, including a 28 mile long run one week before being injured).
