Yes, it has been too long

I need to start updating the blog more often. A quick run down since my last blog post.

I completed the Eugene Marathon, but I was nowhere near as fast as I had hoped/expected. But, I now have a new respect for the distance, that is for sure. I plan on doing another marathon in 2010, maybe Portland or Seattle. We will see.

I have transitioned fully over to barefoot/minimalist running. I know it seems odd, and maybe I am an odd duck. But I have done quite a bit of reading and research and ultimately what it boils down to is there is not a single piece of legitimate research out there that shows running shoes reduce injuries. To the contrary, there is research suggesting modern shoes cause injuries because our feet lose contact (feeling) with what the ground is doing. In addition, modern running shoes promote heel striking, which causes more impact on all of the joints from your ankles all the way up! As an experiment of one I have found that I do have more issues with my IT bands and knees when I run in shoes.

With that revelation about not using shoes any more, I now have a stress fracture in my second metatarsal. YAY! It was a freak accident, which sucked. I was running on a downhill at night in the rain. And when it is raining at night I have a hard time seeing the contours of the road and some objects. As I was running down this hill I landed on a large rock, maybe an inch in diameter, with a fairly pointed side facing up. This hit right where my second toe meets my foot. This caused some immediate pain that I at first thought had cut my foot and/or broke something. Thankfully I was wearing my Vibram Five Fingers which kept it from cutting me. It was painful to continue running but I kind of shrugged it off and finished my run, which was just over a mile.

I continued running for another week and a half. Every time I ran, my foot would feel better, and if I was off of my foot, it would start hurting as soon as I put any weight on it. After a week and a half of the pain not going away, I decided it was time to go see a podiatrist. The podiatrist informed me that I do have a stress fracture in my second metatarsal. So, I am off of running for 3 to 8 weeks as I am in a walking cast.

Although I am not happy that I am now off of running, just as I was getting to the point where I could do runs at a sub 8:00/mile pace, I am looking at this as an opportunity.

I was originally thinking of doing an endurance duathlon this summer, but I have decided maybe this is the perfect opportunity to look at doing a triathlon. So, I have switched over to weight training, swimming and cycling. The weight training is a good thing to do during the winter months anyway. But now I am going to integrate swimming, which I had not originally planned to do this winter. This opens up the possibility of doing a triathlon, which I had previously not considered. We will see how my swimming workouts go, but I may sign up for a Triathlon instead. We will see...

Okay, so, there is an update. Hopefully many more to come.