Virtually annoyed

Tourist season in the Big City of Inverness is not one of my favourite times.  Not only is traffic a nightmare (it took me 40 minutes to drive across town yesterday, a journey that normally takes 10 minutes), but walking has its own hazards.  I was fully prepared yesterday, after a week of dodging pedestrians on the High Street, to head butt the next person who either 1) came to a dead stop in front of me 2) cut across my path or 3) walked into me.  How difficult is it to LOOK WHERE YOU ARE GOING???

Today, though, I was able to stay on the much quieter Black Isle and my drive to the small local gym in nearby Fortrose was notable only for a couple of cyclists and an older person on a mobility scooter, all of which were easily overtaken.  I had a 40 minute cross-training session to do - I might not be able to run, but apparently that's not an excuse to do nothing - including 20 minutes at threshold effort, which I did on the elliptical machine.  Rather than watching television on the elliptical's monitor, I prefer to watch one of the Outdoors videos in which you move along forest trails, lakeside paths, and other scenic settings.  Pretending that I am outside helps to distract me from how mind-numbingly boring cross-training can be.

Anyway, today's choice was one that I haven't used before, a video of a paved walkway along San Francisco Bay, leading to the Golden Gate Bridge.  From the start, the person who had been operating the camera had to dodge and weave their way around random walkers, cyclists, and dogs.  I could feel myself getting irritated with all of this and tried to remind myself that it wasn't real.  However, when one of the walkers coming towards the camera JUST KEPT ON COMING, forcing the camera operator to stop and then move around the walker (and which made ME come to a stop as well, like it was really happening), the annoyance that had just been in my head to that point spilled out of my mouth. 'Oh FFS, get out of the way,' I growled, much to the surprise of the older gentleman sweating away on the elliptical beside me.  He finished his workout very shortly after that - I can't say that I blame him.

Cross-training:  the more like real life you can make it, the better.

A shocking time

Seven weeks and two days ago, I took on London2Brighton and managed 56k before I pulled out due to excruciating pain in my right heel.  I knew going into it that my troublesome heel might not last the distance, but I wanted to give it a go and see how far I could get.  Unfortunately, it started to niggle at 10k and was verging on proper pain at 20k, which was hugely disappointing as I had gone further with less  pain during my training runs.  At the 40k check point, it was so sore that I was limping while running and came into the checkpoint fully prepared to stop, but 30 minutes of eating crisps and drinking tea and texting just about everyone that I know for advice helped me to realise that I wanted to try to carry on to the half-way check point at 56k.  Which somehow I did.  I couldn't run because my heel was entirely too sore - it was like having knives stabbing into me with every step - but I did manage to very slowly hobble my way for 16 kilometres.  It took hours and hours and hours but hey, I got a t-shirt and a Half-Way finishers' medal out of it.  Sensibly, I decided not to hobble on for the remaining 44k.

I haven't been able to run since, aside from a disastrous test-jog three weeks ago.  Adam and I had been working on the assumption that I just had a bruised heel but my reaction to the test-jog made him think that something else was going on.  He thought that I needed an x-ray to rule out a heel spur and, since we knew that Lars the Osteopath (who had so successfully treated my hamstring tendinopathy with dry needling a couple of years ago) has an x-ray machine at his practice, I booked myself in.

It turns out that I didn't need an x-ray.  Apparently shrieking and trying to kick Lars in the head when he dug into my heel was diagnostic all by itself.  In addition to the heel spur, he also identified very unhappy plantar fascias from all of my limping.  'We have a great treatment for this,' he said, 'and you should see rapid improvement within three sessions - but it's going to hurt.'  Pfft, I thought, I'm a tough ultra runner.  How bad can it possibly be?  The answer:  pretty fucking bad.

Heel Spur posed by model.

Hello, Shockwave Therapy.  I have never in my entire life felt anything as painful as this.  It's like having a tiny jackhammer pound on the sorest part of your body for what feels like an eternity but in reality is probably no more than 10 minutes.  I've had three treatments so far and the first one was so painful that I didn't even have the breath to swear.  But after the first treatment, I was walking pain free for the first time in months.  After the second treatment, I had several days of feeling like I had a normal foot again.  I had the third treatment yesterday and am enjoying another pain free day today.  We now give things two weeks to settle down and then will review progress, including whether I can start introducing running again.  I'm not necessarily expecting to get the all clear in two weeks, but I am feeling positive that it's all moving in the right direction.