Ugly Toes

Since I was just there a few weeks ago, we skipped the height and weight check. That's fine by me since I have my own scale, and each time my height gets checked it seems to go down. I did get my blood pressure checked, and the nurse asked if I have low BP. I said it's normally around 100-something/70-something (off the top of my head, that's what I remembered it being). Apparently today it was 90/60, which does sound low. Now that I am at home, I've pulled out my running log, where I've recorded my BP at the last few visits to my regular doctor:
11.07.03: 124/68
11.20.03: 118/76
01.12.04: 104/72
01.22.04: 104/66 (during the echo)
03.08.04: 102/72
So it has been decreasing over the last couple of months. I just told the Engineer about it, and he asked if I mentioned how I almost always get dizzy when I stand up. I didn't mention that to the nurse, but I'll be going in sometime this summer for a physical and I'll talk about it then. Low BP/dizziness seems like a regular doctor issue anyway.

Moving on. I talked with the doctor about the pain and how/when it showed back up. He looked at my leg, and decided to do an x-ray, since we didn't have one last time. He didn't think a stress fracture was likely, especially in the area I've had the problem, but you never know. He did tell me that my knees look great from a physiological standpoint, and that I have really good range of motion and flexibility. I asked about compartment syndrome and he said that was pretty unlikely. My calf muscle is still really flexible and loose, and people with compartment syndrome generally have tight calves even just sitting around. Plus, I hadn't experienced numbness radiating down my leg.

So they x-rayed my leg and knee. The doctor said that my bones look strong and healthy, and there are no signs of fracture. So what's going on? He said it's probably overuse, even though he agreed it did seem odd that I got all through training without problems. But he recommended I rest it for awhile (he said cross-training would be good to keep up my fitness), even though that's hard for runners to hear. And when I start running again, I need to take it easy and build back up slowly. The last thing we talked about, though, I think holds the key to what's going on. We talked about the surfaces I run on. I've been mainly on roads lately, which have a crown. Since I always run on the left side of the road, my left leg is always on the down side. Running at that angle puts stress on the outside of that leg. So a-ha! That kind of explains why my treadmill run was completely pain free - it was an even surface. I mentioned this to the Engineer and he pointed out how I had been doing so much of my training on the (more even surfaced) bike paths. All of my long runs were on the bike paths, with very minimal road running. The marathon did have some roads mixed in, and I haven't been out to the bike paths since then. So maybe that's what's going on.

I think I'm going to take a few more cross-training days, and then head out to the bike paths. I think I'll stick to 3-5 mile runs to start with and see how things go. I'm not too worried about completing TCM; I've heard countless stories of people who haven't been able to get above 14-15 miles in the 18 weeks prior to the race that have been able to finish okay. And even if my 18 weeks of TCM training aren't stellar, I do have a nice 3-4 month base of 20-25 mpw and 17 weeks of quality marathon training under my belt. I firmly believe that those two things will pull me through, even if my training immediately before the marathon is a little spotty. Besides, I could still manage to PR at TCM if I just run it at long run/easy pace, so all is not lost.