No running for at least 3 weeks

I visited the podiatrist again today and got my stitches out. Someone told me that getting the stitches OUT hurts more than getting them in. I don't remember who it was, but whoever they are, THEY ARE CRAZY. I didn't feel a thing.

The doctor and I sat and stared at my unresponsive toe and tried to decide why it is refusing to move. I showed him my trick of getting it to flare out to the side and he said, "That's nice. But that's a different muscle."

It could very well be that the tendon has ruptured again. But we've decided to give it three weeks of physical therapy (or three weeks of some trained professional lifting and lowering my pinkie toe for an hour every few days, be sure to get a mental picture of this), until we decide whether or not to do an MRI.

I started laughing in the podiatrist's office because I pictured myself waking up one day, tossing the covers aside to reveal my revived pinkie toe standing up on it's own, shining in the sunshine in all of it's glory. I would jump out of bed and spin around the room like it was the happiest day of my life.

Sometimes I forget that other people are reading this...

In the meantime the only thing I'm not allowed to do is run. In the grand scheme of things I suppose no running for 3 weeks won't make a big difference. But if you think about the chain of events that it's going to set off, maybe it makes a little bit of a difference in my world.

In less than three weeks is the Mt. Marathon Race. That means, that I can't run the race this year. The good news is, I can get an injury waiver for and preserve my spot in next years race.

Before you can take time off from Mt. Marathon (to come back whenever you want), you have to be a veteran, which means you have to have successfully completed the race 10 times. I started doing this race in 2007 when I was 31. This would have been my third time in the race. Which would mean in 2016, when I turned 40, I would have been doing my 10th race. That would have been cool.

But, assuming that I don't get injured during this time of year again, I will be 41 when I do my 10th race. Not as cool. Alright I guess it's not that big of a deal.

I'm also coming to the realization that I will not be running a marathon this fall. I sort of already thought that it might be too much to do a 100 mile mountain bike race and then immediately start marathon training, but more difficult things have been done.

All of this is going to end up being good for me in the end. Now I can focus on mountain biking and not have any distractions with this running stuff. Sometimes we just need to sever our appendages to bring us back down to earth so that we can focus.