I am glad to have a few runs under my belt and not feeling too much worse for wear.  I ran a whole 9.7 miles this week!!

That’s three run each around 3 miles.  The conditions have been kind of crappy but I’m not going to complain. My foot actually feels pretty good.  I had my first Iontophoresis appointment this week and that helped tremendously.  Simply stated it is electrically putting steroids into my heel.

I only had a 3 day work week due to the MLK holiday and a record keeping day for teachers (my position doesn’t require me to work those days).  So I ran at Pike Island on Monday on the snowy/icy winter hiking trail.  It didn’t feel bad but I was a little sore the  next day.  I also ran on the West River Rd from 36th Street down to the Wabun Picnic Area and looped back.  Still fairly icy.  For both runs I wore my YakTrax.

I was planning to go skiing on Sunday, but the rain from Friday and Saturday didn’t leave a lot of good snow so instead went for a 3 mile run from my house.  It wasn’t too bad, but some of the sidewalks were solid sheets of ice. It was actually in the 30’s for this run, so I won’t complain.

Stretching and doing my physical therapy workouts have been helping me feel good. I’m excited and cautiously optimistic about the treatments and my running.  It is slowly creeping up on my Plantaverissary.

One Post: This might be a little late for this year, but Winter Running: Running at-21

I didn’t do much this week and I’m not going to give you a laundry list of excuses.  Just that it is hard to get motivated to go to the gym, when you’d rather be running.  But on a good note, I had an appointment with a sports doctor this week at my local clinic.  She happens to be the sports doc for the University of Minnesota as well.

She concluded that I do have Plantar Fasciitis (duh!) and we are going to take a more aggressive approach to get rid of it.  She wants me to keep doing the physical therapy exercises (I haven’t been to the therapist since October) and wants me to start going back again.  With a different focus.  I was hoping just to get the cortisone shot and get it over with, but that has some  negative side effects (atrophy in the fat pad on the heel).  Her next thought was to give me dexamethasone via iontophoresis for awhile and switch to using a boot. She seemed to think the boot was a little more aggressive than the Strassburg Sock.  All I know for sure is that the boot is harder to sleep with!  She also indicated that it was ok for me to start running again.

So I did… not much.  The appointment was on Thursday and I wasn’t able to go out until Saturday morning and I just did a little 1.8 mile run from the house.  It was really nice to be out there! I couldn’t find all of my stuff, but the 21 degrees made it ok!  Yes it still hurt, but the doctor said that not running obviously wasn’t helping so she didn’t see a problem with me running again.

Sunday I went for a snow shoe again! I walked along the Minnehaha Creek toward the Mississippi River.  It only ended up being 1.5 miles but it was fun.  The recent warm-up actually made the creek unsafe to walk on for much of the trip, but that was fine.  It was still fun.

One Post This week’s one post to remember is the 10 Basic Building Bloks of a Blog.

The first day back to work after a two week break is hard enough, not to mention getting up early enough to workout.  We’ll let that excuse cover Monday morning and Monday nights are always busy.  Tuesday was still really hard to get up and Tuesday night I think the sinus issues I had over most of the break caught up with me and I didn’t feel good at all.  Getting up wasn’t easy all week, though by Friday it started to get easier!  And I chose not to workout the rest of the week hoping to get over the sinus pressure/headaches.   The temps were well in the negative numbers and barely getting into positive numbers for most of the week, so that didn’t help either.  We were hoping to snowshoe over the weekend but Christy wasn’t feeling well.  So I didn’t go to the gym at all this week.

I ended up going snow shoeing by myself on Sunday afternoon.  I did 3.5 miles around Pike Island at Fort Snelling.  It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed walking on the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.  I saw a lot of deer and probably more people than I’ve ever seen at the park in the summer.  I know some people enjoy the flatness of the park for cross-country skiing.

My foot is feeling better, but is still sensitive to the touch in the Plantar Fasciitis area.  I have an appointment on the 14th so hopefully some good news will come.

One Post*

A few thoughts on my first run in the Twin Cities.

*One Post will be the best post from the past years during this week.

The  final week of 2009 included a few good workouts.

Two Elliptical workouts (5.4 miles), 2 swimming workouts (1,050 yards)  and 3 weights (machines at 50lbs)!

No snow shoveling, though I need to go out and break up some ice!!  The sun comes out and melts enough to make a messy situation in the morning.  Especially when the overnight temps get down into the negative double digits.

My foot had been feeling better, though the heel was still sensitive to direct pressure.  I thought things were looking up.  Sadly, I slammed my foot on the pool wall (I miss judged the distance while turning around) and it has been hurting again.  Part of me is ready to give up on it and start running again.  Now that it is a new year, I’m going to get into a sports doc and see what the “other options” are.  Amputation?  Cortisone? Botox? Slicing the PF?  Time will tell!

This was Saturday after we got back from the YWCA.

Here is a look at this week’s swim workout:

Week 2 – Workouts 3 and 4: Swim 10 x 50 yards, take 30 to 45 seconds of rest between each 50.

Previous Posts

Finishing up the Bestof Series…

2008 Race Experiences

2008 Most Read Articles

New Year’s posts from 2008 and 2009

Foto Friday with wedding sparklers