Plantar Fasciitis?!

More Injury News

As if I'm not having enough trouble with injury, pain, and running. Now, it appears that I have Plantar Fasciitis in my right foot. The pain is excruciating! It looks like I'll be backing off the mileage, just as I started getting into it. I've been icing nightly and bought an ice pack for work. Rolling my foot on a tennis ball provides a bit of relief, and the pain seems to be localized near the heel and instep more than anywhere else on the foot.

I'm sure this is all due to my barefoot running, which places more stress upon these muscles. I did run in my racing flats this morning, and my KSOs this evening. The New Balance MT101s I used at Afton are also minimalistic in nature with little cushion. Perhaps I'm hurting myself more than necessary here. Time for a cushioned shoe with zero drop and perhaps a little arch support while I heal? Newtons need not apply!

Hopefully, I'll be able to bounce back from this one faster than the Achilles tendonitis, which by the way, is healing relatively well, even with my double day today -- a run commute of five miles in one direction, ten mile round trip.

Tomorrow, by necessity, will be a rest day. Funny how I don't own a pair of arch support shoes any more...

Baby News

Meghan has turned in a little early tonight to catch a little early sleep, and Nora's due for her next bottle at 00:30. She's a little firecracker, that one, and she's left Meghan and I a bit ragged. We're making due, and things are getting better on a daily basis. The old habits and tricks for taking care of a baby are coming back, as are the memories of those really difficult nights.

Meghan found a new style of bottle that seems to be performing really well, the Avent bottles. They're sized and shaped more closely to a breast, have two holes instead of one, and have multiple vents that allow air to pass into the bottle. They're touted as helping babies with colic, which thankfully Nora does not have. She hasn't spit-up on me since the switch, so they're definitely worth the investment!

Anyway, time to turn in -- after a quick snack. All of this running has been sapping me of much needed calories!

Winter Shufflin Blues

Finally made it through my backlog of emails at work!  Only took two hours after the boys went to bed.  Originally thought I would hack on my own stuff, alas it was not to be.  I've been sitting in front of this laptop for most of the evening, first to work on an on-call page, then to dig in to some funky unit testing for an Andriod application I'm writing - yes, this is what I do for fun.  Before I got started, I wanted to bring my INBOX count down to 50 emails, if at all possible.  If I can't quickly browse through that venerable folder and get a quick understand of my outstanding issues, I start to feel swamped and overwhelmed.  It's been above 50 for a couple weeks now.  Today was no exception; over 250.  Most of the emails were either things I couldn't take care of immediately, were simply Cc's of other conversations, or things already resolved.

I'm down to 70 emails now, and I'm calling it quits for the night.  Lisa Loeb is telling me to "Stay" (I loved her in the 90's).  I could so easily continue working, since the well never runs dry.  I'm not going to listen!  No.  Count Basie will be giving me the "Roseland Shuffle" instead!


Speaking of shuffling, I've been doing a bit of that lately as well.  Running has been painful due to over-stretching my left Achilles tendon in an unfortunate downward facing dog pose following a 3 mile barefoot run.  I didn't notice the problem until later that day, but it has plagued me since.  Two weeks out, and I'm wondering how the heck I'm supposed to run a 50 miler next Fall if I can't even get out for a 3 mile jaunt.  ARG! I've managed to get to the pool for a couple of 1200m swims.  Mainly SKPs, but I think a 2-a-week schedule will help keep my conditioning up, especially as winter progresses.


And then there's the snow!  Snow!  Maybe my bum heel will allow me a bit of cross-country skiing?  Perhaps!  Time to check in to SkinnySki!