Am I Destined to be a Couch Potato?

Well, here I am once again on injured reserve.   It seems like as soon as I pay for an expensive race (e.g. 2014 Disney World Tower of Terror 10-miler & 2016 Disney Princess Half Marathon) I seem to sustain some sort of injury that sidelines me.

While the 2014 hip fracture was a true Tower of Terror game-ender for me, I refuse to let my Achilles tendon ruin the Princess Half Marathon that I have been dreaming about for 2 years.  I don’t even know how I hurt the tendon, I woke up after a 5K race and it just hurt.  Knowing that I am facing the Marine Corps 10K in October and 22.4 miles in February for the PHM weekend I don’t have the luxury of slacking on my training.  Therefore I immediately got an appointment with the local, large Walmart-esque orthopedic practice – only because they could get me right in, not because I particularly find them to be good at what they do, if you are interested (and why wouldn’t you be?) you can refer to my previous sob-story on this topic here.

The X-rays showed that the bone was fine and after about 20 seconds of squeezing and poking my foot the podiatrist decreed that it was an Achilles injury and that I should come back in 2 weeks if it still hurt. Um, and then?

Seriously, that was the extent of my diagnosis and treatment plan, but what should I expect from a doctor visit lasting about 68 seconds I should have just lit that $30 copay on fire.

I told the doc that I had a 10K that upcoming Friday and his only response was, “well, I’m not going to tell you can’t run it”. Well guess what, if you really think I shouldn’t run it then you BETTER tell me not to as otherwise I will run it (and of course I did, big mistake).

Side note, I have zero idea what this doctor’s name was all I know is that he had the biggest butt-chin I have ever seen, to the point that it was almost cartoonish – have you ever seen American Dad?

Realizing I had to do something rather than just wait 2 weeks then checking back in with the American Dad, I found some stretches on the internet hoping for some relief. Once again the Google failed me (I was so confident in my internet-sourced expert medical advice too) so I finally got in with my podiatrist yesterday.  Dr. Grace is fantastic and spent a long time listening to me, showing me the right stretches to do, (seriously, what I pulled from the interwebs was actually making it worse, shocking) got me fitted for a night boot and prescribed me something to help with the soft tissue swelling around the tendon - FYI Etodolac is AMAZING! 

I have a follow up appointment in 10 days and he feels confident that I should start seeing an improvement so that we can move on to PT. 

Bottom line, I am relieved.  If I have to take a month off from running… I’ll survive (and play non-stop with my puppy). In the meantime I will take advantage of this opportunity to learn how to prevent another Achilles injury in the future (spoiler alert, stretch the crap out of your calf muscles) as well as focus on core training, something I loathe but know is so important – yay planks (insert eye-roll here)

Also, while I have never been that big on getting second opinions because I am too cheap to shell out the bucks for another copay, no one knows your body better than you, so LISTEN TO IT. I learned this lesson the hard way last year which is why this time I was so quick to get in with a doctor I trusted before I caused even more self-inflicted damage.  So I am out another $30 for a co-pay, it's still better than losing the registration money for all of my upcoming races - and the medals, I want that Disney Bling dammit!