Plantar fasciitis? Sounds like an agrarian-totalitarian political movement! But it's a painful foot condition, an inflammation of the tissues on the sole — one of the few aches that I haven't (as far as I know) experienced after over-enthusiastic running.
For the past couple of years, though, I've had twinges on the bottom of my left foot, sort of clicky-shifts among the bones behind the lesser toes (metatarsals?). They're most noteworthy when I walk down stairs or put weight on the outside of the ball of the foot, particularly in sandals or other shoes without arch supports. So far the phenomenon hasn't interfered with my rambles around the neighborhood. Clips adapted from Brian Tresp's running blog sprintbare.com during the past fortnight:
2004-05-28 - Geese and Rainbows
6+ miles @ ~10.5 min/mi
Back from Texas late last night, after 5 days of no running while we visit family and buy a new violin for daughter ... orchestra rehearsal in Falls Church VA this evening gives me a chance to try some "speedwork" around the George C. Marshall High School track, alternating "fast" laps (~1:55) with half-lap recovery walks (~2:00) ... 15 geese in the infield eye me suspiciously as they forage ... thunderstorms pass by, leaving fragments of rainbows in northeast (a double) and southeast (single but brighter and taller) ...
7 miles @ ~12 min/mi
Daughter has Saturday morning orchestra rehearsal in Falls Church VA, so GPS-equipped I head south from Route 7 in search of the W&OD Trail ... foolishly venture through some woods near the Beltway (lots of poison ivy — ugh!), emerge in sombody's back yard, and eventually find the trail near milepost 8.5 ... three measured miles along it and then back to the orchestra site ... I acquire latitudes and longitudes of four W&OD markers to add to my GPS coordinate collection ...
6 miles @ ~10.3 min/mi
3 measured miles along Silgo Creek Trail at 9:45 pace ... from home, jog by Forest Glen Park where early this morning my wife reports a car ran off the road and hit a tree (the car is towed away by the time I get there at 9am, but the tree looks hurt and there is damage to the concrete drain at the roadside) ... lots of lady runners on SCT today ... male cardinal flies straight at me, like a scarlet bullet ... cicadas are relatively quiet ...
2004-05-31 - MINI Cooper Sighting
5+ miles @ ~11.2 min/mi
Evening loop (WRx/RCT/GB) ... cicada rating "7" (loud but not deafening) on Rock Creek Trail near MitP 22.5 ... middle mile 10:02 but humidity (and running 4 days in a row) slows me down thereafter ... cute MINI Cooper "S" model on Coquelin Terrace at MitP 23.9, gray with white top ...
~3 miles @ ~8.1 min/mi
A 5 km race (note: course not certified) at my office, won by some youngster in a bit over 16 minutes ... for me it was slightly slower than my 8 min/mi goal, but ~45 seconds behind last year's result ... excuses: a year older; a little heavier; absence of whip-cracking coach to push me ... followed a pretty lady most of the way (which probably explains why I wasn't slower!) ... first half 11:58, second half 12:32 ... optimal weather, cool and cloudy ...
11+ miles @ ~11 min/mi
A nice rainy run, cool and comfortable ... Daughter is starting in the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland, so I ride with Wife to College Park on a mission to deliver some forgotten items, then jog home via Northwest Branch and Sligo Creek trails ... my water bottle is inadvertently left behind in Wife's MINI Cooper, so I have nothing to drink for the first hour other than suck on my moustache ... after ~6 miles I find a fountain in the park on SCT upstream of New Hampshire, and half an hour later get another drink at the tennis courts near SCT and Colesville Rd. ... in Parklawn Park just south of East-West Highway I startle a pair of long-necked birds and they lumber into flight — perhaps they are juvenile Great Blue Herons? — they have skinny gray bodies, long necks, long legs, and mostly black heads with white stripes ... the paths today are littered with the aftermath of cicadasex and treesex: thousands of locust corpses, plus bushels of fallen stamens/pistils/anthers/etc. ... wooden bridges over the streams are especially slippery/slimy ... Brood X of the 17-year cicada is now on the decline: the volume of chirping is down to ~4 on my subjective scale of loudness, even in the most woodsy areas ...
3.1 miles @ ~10 min/mi
Comrade KS and I have a good time at today's MCRRC Capital Crescent 5 km ... 30:30, a PR for KS and particularly strong since he did a 5k "Race for the Cure" only yesterday. Cool weather, superb organization, great post-race food ... bravo! to the organizers & volunteers ...
2005-06-09 - Too Wet and Too Warm
11+ miles @ ~11.5 min/mi
RCT/NIH/GB circuit (see ThreeNewLoopRuns) 7:30-9:30am on an already-too-humid morning ... survived only by pouring a liter of cold water over my head every ~3 miles and soaking my shirt before setting off to the next fountain ... measured miles included a 9:46 (#3) and a 9:50 (#8) but final three miles were at a wilted ~12 minute pace ...
TopicRunning - TopicPersonalHistory - 2004-06-09
(correlates: GoForBaroque, CoarseCorrection, OnFailure, ...)