Post-50k Update

 

 
Everything went so well during my race! My stomach felt great! My knee only hurt for a little bit! My muscles were barely sore after! I escaped injury!

Except I didn’t. My ankle/foot started bothering me a few days after the race. It gave me some grief directly after the race as I hobbled from the car to shovel Chipotle into my face, but I didn’t think anything of it since the rest of my body was also sore. Being a first-timer, and constantly injured, I wasn’t (and to be honest, still am not 100%) sure about what’s normal post-race when it comes to pain. It only hurt for a few minutes and then subsided, so I assumed it wasn’t a big deal and went about my post-race business of inhaling a burrito bowl. 

About 2 days after that, after a full day of work (I’m a nanny, so I’m constantly running around) my ankle/outer foot was pretty painful to put pressure on. After some phone calls and emails, I saw my doctor on Monday. Turns out, I have peroneal tendinosis in my left foot/ankle. Well, somewhere between tendinitis and tendinosis, since generally tendinosis presents a week or more after a race and tendinitis usually presents directly after the race. 

The bad news? It hurts. The good news? It’s totally not as bad as I thought it would be. I absolutely trust my doctor, and the first words out of his mouth after we talked about my pain was that I can still run. Ideally the recovery would include rest and physical therapy to heal, but since I’ve only got the Boston Half and the Marine Corps Marathon left on the race calendar for now, he gave me the go ahead to continue training unless the pain is overwhelming. If it’s too painful to run, I can bike and elliptical to keep myself in shape for my races.

My physical therapist encouraged me to not run until the half just to be safe, but we will see how I’m feeling next week. We are going to San Diego for Matt’s 100k next week and it seems like a waste to go out west and not experience what it’s like out on the trails! In the meantime, I will be ellipticalling, biking, icing, and doing my physical therapy exercises to keep my body in shape while I heal.

I knew my first ultra was too good to be true!