It's never lupus!

The good news is I finally figured out what was going on with my ankle a few weeks ago.

The bad news is I figured it out because it started happening again after Monday's run.

Saaaaaaaaad panda.

The better news is I know why it's happening now and hopefully how to stop it.

The day is redeemed!

I woke up Tuesday morning and realized that my right foot hurt again, the same way it had about a month ago after the creeper run. This time however I paid a bit more attention to where it actually hurt and realized that the pain was coming from lower then I had previously thought, it was really more in my heel than in my ankle. The main source of the discomfort was on the area inside of my right foot, a bit in front of the Achilles tendon. There was also a more dull sort of ache along the bottom of my foot radiating out from my heel across the arch. It was annoying in general, but it was worst when I had been off of it for a while.

Google is second only to Dr House in medical diagnosis science as we all know, and so I consulted the "medical experts".

Leaving aside the dubious wisdom of self-diagnosis via totally random and essentially anonymous people ranked in order of supposed importance by a for-profit company; site after site points me at plantar fasciitis and this actually does make sense. It didn't start bothering me until I had stopped having problems with shin splints and consequently stopped obsessively stretching my feet, calves, and shins all the time.

I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday daytime carefully stretching my foot and rolling on a Foot Rubz massage ball (get one if you like wearing high heels, you will thank me) and by Wednesday evening my foot was feeling happy again so I decided to run. My weekend is packed between two Halloween parties, my first brick and mortar 5K, a planned evening at Coney Island, and a Frankenstorm so I decided to "take it easy" and run without any sort of specific goal in mind.

This was probably good since I headed out of the gate WAY too fast and then had to stop abruptly right before the end of mile one to keep from getting chased by a particularly sassy terrier. I'm pretty sure it was inside of one of those invisible fence things but I wasn't about to take any chances. Once I had casually strolled out of range of the dog's immediate attention I ran the rest at a more reasonable pace and satisfied myself with having simply run (which really was surprisingly satisfying).

image from http://crossfithoodriver.com

Wednesday's run: a 5K run plus 5 minute warmup and cooldown walks.
3.10 miles at an average of 11:46 per mile -  total time of 36:30

The data on my Nike+ is crapping the bed, it has three separate days listed as my fasted 1K, including a day I didn't actually run.