Progress report

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The Long Beach Marathon came and went last Sunday. It was quite disappointing that I helplessly had to sit out of the race although I even went down to the Long Beach Convention Center to pick up my bib and a t-shirt the day before. As I wrote it in the previous post, the reality was that my left foot was hurting.

During the past race day weekend and earlier this week, the healing progress was so slow that I was not even sure if my injury would even heal in time to run the Surf City Marathon, which is just under 3 1/2 months away. Simply my mind was plagued with this rather negative thought that it would not heal in time, let alone enough for training once it’s healed. And that I might have to call them and beg them to cancel it (on a notion that they usually say there would be no refund).

However, it has never deterred me from focusing on healing by continuing the home remedies and strength training at the gym. While at work or home, I constantly massaged my foot with the rubber ball underneath it and stretched it at the gym while working on the core – planks and push-ups.

And finally last Thursday I walked to work, which marked 2 weeks and 2 days since the day of injury. It is less than 2 miles, which takes about a half hour, and I had done that every day till the injury happened. In spite of not much of distance, it was rather nerve-wracking to see if I could walk such a distance again without pain or discomfort.

I started walking to the gym from last week, but it was only a 10 minute walk, so I wanted to see if the plantar fascia in my left foot is healed enough to take long distances without pain. And it went fine. Of course, I had to be careful not to land on my forefoot first, and it got better next day.

And now I can take photos on my way to work and back home and share them on Facebook like I always did.

And today, after strength training, I ran on the treadmill for about a mile. What a progress I made! I was quite thrilled witnessing how long my left foot was able to keep up.

I had to bail this morning’s hike because last night I was not convinced that my left foot was healed enough to take on the long, strenuous hike. With another one scheduled next Saturday, now that I believe that it can handle a bit of distance, I will keep monitoring the progress while having another week to rest and remedy before the long walk.

How was your running this week? Did you run the Long Beach Marathon? How did it go?

Thanks for reading.