Monday, 11 February 2013

My left foot turns out to be my Achilles' heel


Keeping things in perspective as ever, utter and unimaginable disaster has struck my plans for marathon domination, in the shape of an infected toe.
My left foot, it seems, is my Achilles' heel, as it were. I have taken a picture of the offending toe and intended to post it on this blog to illustrate the sheer horror of the situation, but realised even the internet is not an appropriate place to plaster this particular obscene image.
The problem is that I may have an in-growing toenail on my left foot. It has been looking quite angry and infected for the past couple of weeks and I’d hoped that after a bit of Dettol and the odd squeeze to bring down the swelling it might sort of heal itself.
However it reached a peak of pain over the weekend so off to the doctor I went today and have been told, that until it clears up, NO RUNNING! ARRRGHGHGHGRHRHG!
I nearly cried out like a petulant teenager who’s Playstation has been confiscated when I was told this evening that I would have to shelve my training.
I’m now relying on some strong antibiotics and steroid cream to do their magic or else apparently it may require minor surgery to cut out the nail. Which would presumably put me out for another week or so.
This all left me feeling quite bereft and sorry for myself as I limped out of the surgery clutching my meds, which apparently may or may not include diarrhoea as one of the side effects. That’ll go down well as I am spending the next three days working in the office of our biggest and most corporate client. Oh god.
So that’s it for this week I think. I’ll have to hang up my running shoes for a few days and hope to god that I’ll be able to get back into the regime next week.
It makes the progress so far even more important because if I hadn’t exceeded expectations it would be difficult to get back into my stride. I’m also worried about piling on all that weight again, but I’m going to at least keep walking on a regular basis to keep the cardio-vascular activity up. He didn’t say I couldn’t walk after all.
Realistically I could be looking at the rest of February on the bench. It’s looking like March could be a big month to get over this set back and really ramp up the mileage. As I turn 38 next month, I face a mighty challenge to keep up the progress and make sure I’m still on track to run my second marathon in May.

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