Toe Business

"artist's" impression (no camera)

I had a bit of a pain in the front of my foot before the E2NB race and I kind of knew it wouldn't be improved by a 20 mile road race. The pain has become more focused and seems to belong to the knuckle of my freakishly long second toe on my right foot.

On Sunday I went out a recovery run. It was a painful shuffle. Yesterday I eschewed all running, hoping that dotting around on my bike to get my day's chores done would do something to aid my recovery and preserve my toe. Still I was limping by the end of the day.

Today Mr Toe was still sore right from the off. I thought gloomily that I could go another bike ride or go for a swim...even checked out the pool opening times. Then I thought "to hell with it, it's probably just a spot of arthritis, I think I'll go for a run!" So for a run I've been.

The sun has come back out at last and Arthur's Seat was glorious. The grass and trees have gone a crazy, shiny green with all the rain. The sky was a happy blue. The sun was out. the gorse smelt like coconut. The birds were singing. It was heaven. My toe was a wee bit sore but I didn't care.

Rather than go any kind of a long run it seemed to make sense to do some short hard stuff. High Intensity Interval Training.  So I did some strides as a warm up and then did 5 uphill "sprints" up the easy end of the radical road. I was going to run to the top and then I thought I would run for a count of 200 paces (left and right) and then I thought 70 paces would do. 70 paces coincided with some stones crossing the path so gave a recognisable mark to work with.

It was easy and fun. I lie. It was hellish. But the first one was the worst.

So I've enjoyed being out for a run. Too busy to run tomorrow so I'm hoping any damage I've done will be fading by Thursday. In the meantime I plan to go and get some rub on ibuprofen in the hope it's just a bit of inflammation in my toe joint...