Well, when I started my marathon training last month, I said that my main goal would be to increase my volume at just the right rate to both be prepared and uninjured. Saturday, I went out to the Wolf River trails (pretty flat, pretty smooth) to do my weekly “long run” of 13.5 miles. When I started warming up, my left ankle and knee were kinda achy, but it mostly went away after a mile or two. I finished my run, cooled down, and drove home, only to find that after sitting in the car for 5-10 minutes, the same slight pains I’d felt warming up were now nearly crippling.

I took a couple of days off, and now I can walk and go up stairs with no pain. However, running and going down stairs are left-side torture. At first, I was thinking it’d be a job for ibuprofen, ice, and KT Tape. However, once I started looking in to KT taping for medial ankle pain, I found out that the pain- likely caused by tibialis posterior tendinitis, wasn’t something I should be training through for something as un-serious as an offseason marathon.

Of course, I immediately took to becoming an internet expert on it.

The odd thing seems to be that, though one of my feet is slightly flatter than the other, the injury is not on the flat side (it’s usually associated with lots of overpronation & fallen arches). The good news is, mine is relatively minor at this point. I can still stand on my toes and balance on that foot. However, if I want it to go away, I need to not piss it off any more and do some rehab exercises… all of which I’m still too sore to do at this point, according to the instructions.

So, my marathon status is very unsure at this point. I’m basically going to be forced back on to the bike for any endurance exercise. That won’t be unbearable, except for the fact that it’s really freaking cold outside. Also, I’ve developed a nearly crippling fear of drivers. I have this terrible mental picture of how much people want to kill me when they see me riding a bike on the road. It’s terrifying. Cars are huge and terrifying, and the people who control them are totally tuned out and self absorbed. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it. For now, I’ll likely be taking the unfinished greenline to the nearby trail system in order to avoid nearly all roads.

In the meantime, I’m definitely getting the fight bug again. I ended up not going to the proposed grappling tournament over the weekend because of schedule conflicts with training buddies John and Aaron. Oh yeah, and it’s probably worth noting that a couple of weeks ago, the nice girl who gave me free rhinoplasy back in July won against her next opponent via first round TKO. She no longer has the losing record as she did when we’d first picked her as a potential opponent. I have to say… good work on her part. If you read the comments section on most of her old fight videos, there are some really mean people saying mean things about how she should just give it up. Ryan was at his Marx-Bensdorf team party Saturday and was asked by a couple of his teammates as to whether or not I’d fight again. Of course I will… why not?

In other non-cycling, non-MMA news, I’m super excited that a yoga studio (Pike Yoga) opened not too far from me- less than a 15 minute drive. Their schedule is nice, and includes plenty of classes that are somewhat “easy,” which is nice when all of your other physical activity is “hard.”  They’re offering free yoga until Thanksgiving, too, so, for now, I’m going to take full advantage of it. I need both the physical benefits and the inner peace at this point.