A day late making this post.
Anyway - last week I started off with a 10 mile run, somewhat re-aggrevated my right big toe, did the P90x Legs & Back workout, and figured that the incipient soreness would keep me from wanting to run. It did, but by Sunday I was starting to wonder if I could run again. My toe was feeling 95% better - but it was one of those things where the last little bit of ache just. wasn't. going. away. Once in a while I've had aches that were like that, and they aren't necessarily made worse by running, and in some ways can actually be helped. I've always surmised in those situations that the extra bloodflow helps more with healing than the harm done by the activity. The problem is you never know quite when you cross the line from activity hurting to activity helping.
After a couple days of this, I decided to give a shot at a fairly short run. The complication I had in mind was this: I am hoping to do a half marathon in a couple weeks, and this coming weekend I'm hoping to do 8-10 miles of the course. It is a hilly course, so having some exposure to the route would be beneficial. On the other hand, if I went for a run and started over with reaggrevating the ache, then I'd likely have to pass on the half marathon and just suck up a few weeks of not running.
In the end, I decided to take a gamble - mostly because the ache had actually migrated up the foot a tad, and was no longer in the same spot. So I reasoned that this might be an effect of the human body's ability to compensate during injury to reduce stress in one area - an action which can often cause extra stress in another.
It wasn't looking so good initially, as I was feeling the foot every time it struck the ground. About a mile in I was really debating the wisdom of this, but for some reason I kept going. I'm not sure why - I think it was just plain old stubborn-ness. I kept up a threshold pace for the run, but I wasn't looking at the Garmin - mostly going just on what felt comfortably hard. I didn't know whether I was doing 8:30 min/miles or 7:45.
When I got back home, I iced my foot immediately and took a couple aspirin - thinking that maybe if I caught it in time, the inflammation could be minimized. My foot did hurt a bit initially, starting out feeling like it was definitely reaggrevated, but over time it actually diminished quite a bit. Probably an effect of the aspirin.
I woke up this morning with it actually feeling like it was back to square one - no worse for wear. I took an aspirin in the morning, and another at lunch. My current thinking is that maybe a constant low level of NSAID's will help knock it out by preventing just normal every day life (ie, walking) from causing a constant low level of inflammation. I guess we'll see how it goes - but so far, as I write this 9 hours after my last aspirin tab, it does seem to as feel close to 100% as it has felt so far.
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