Just Dreaming

I had a dream that I was running last night. Just a regular run. Somewhere outside of town in the short grass next to the road. Bright sun and slightly cloudy. A faster than normal pace, but not a sprint. My legs, feet, knees and ankles were pain free.
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 Three years ago, I decided to commit to a year long running goal. To keep myself accountable, I announced my year long goal of 200 runs of at least 3 miles on twitter. I then posted my progress at least weekly. I finished run 200 in early December. The next year I decided to raise the bar to 225 and 3.5 miles per run. In July I was so far ahead of pace, that I changed the goal to 300. This meant running everyday except for 8 days the rest of the year. On new years eve, I finished run 300 on a treadmill while watching a bowl game.
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I woke up wishing I could go back. I wanted to have a few more minutes running easily on the side of the road. Instead I slowly lower my feet to the floor and limp to my shoes. Old running shoes with arch supports and an ankle support bandage. Once I have these on I walk almost normally to the kitchen and start breakfast. After 15 minutes the pain is down and my left ankle and arch almost feel normal.
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My ankle had started hurting after a run sometime in November during my quest for 300. I kept running. It didn't hurt very much and it didn't hurt everyday. The January after 300 (it was the beginning of 2011) I decided to try for 20 runs a month or 240 for the year. I had decided that 300 was too much and I needed to scale back. I kept up the pace needed to reach the goal. My ankle hurt more and more often. I was noticing that I limped all the time when August rolled around. I decided to go see a doctor.

The sports medicine specialist I saw sent me to PT.  The PT specialist saw that the arch on my left foot was flat.  For all I know it has always been flat.  He said that the worst thing a person like me could do was run.  I've been running for about 15 years with no significant injury (except for that back injury, but that's a different story).  He taught me some exercises to strengthen the muscles that help to support the arch.  Come back in a few weeks.

I scaled back running and told myself that I might not make my goal this year, but I was OK with that.  I did the exercises, bought at least five different arch supports for my shoes, and only ran 3 times a week.

I went to Europe for the first time (awesome time at VMworld Europe) and walked and stood basically all day.  I also ran in Denmark and Sweden - incredible stuff.

The pain had reached the point where my foot hurt all the time.  Even after I had been sitting for hours, it still hurt.

When I got back home in late October, I was very good.  No running and I did the PT exercises everyday for about three weeks.  The just got worse.  I thought something must be torn.  The doctor agreed that we should get an MRI to see what was going on.

The process to get an MRI and get results from the MRI stretched into mid December.  The results came back that I just had inflammation in some ligaments.  The doctor recommended that I do the same stretches and come back in a few weeks if things weren't better.
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I find myself day dreaming about the last run I got to do.  I really miss getting outside and running.  I was depressed for after I stopped.  I became a bit more depressed after I realized that I wasn't going to be starting again anytime soon.

A few times I've had real dreams about running.  Sometimes I get to tell a story about something that happened once when I was running or somebody asks me a question about running.  I hope that I get to run again.
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I decided to let my foot rest and not do anything for a while.  I sure wasn't going to do those exercises again that just made things worse.  At the end of January it was better.  In February I took my foot to a massage therapist / PT / knower of many things.  He taught me about stretches and trigger points and a bunch of other stuff.  It still hurts, but I think things are getting better.  Definitely. Maybe. I'll see how I feel tomorrow.
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There are so many times that I wish I'd had a camera when I was out running.  People and places that I have seen.  Now that I can't run, I'm going to blog about running.  Makes perfect sense.

In this long pause from running, I've decided to do something that I have been wanting to do for several years.  I'm starting this running blog.