post the sixty-eighth, 2013

according to the mayo clinic website (and probably any doctor could tell you):

A sprain is a stretching or tearing of ligaments — the tough bands of fibrous tissue that connect one bone to another in your joints. The most common location for a sprain is in your ankle.

A strain is a stretching or tearing of muscle or tendon. A tendon is a fibrous cord of tissue that connects muscles to bones. Strains often occur in the lower back and in the hamstring muscle in the back of your thigh.

we are concerned here with the anterior talofibular and cancaneofibular ligaments.

remember tuesday? i was all boo-yah, i am superman, yipee-kai-yay and whatnot. wednesday was going along fine as days go -- shower, breakfast, commute, production meeting. the training docket called for an easy 5-mile run, so i headed out at midday to do just that. mile one, sweet. mile two, fine. mile three, whaaat?? the outside of my foot - sort of right under the ankle bone, directly in the middle of the side of the heel - was hurting. it went from "huh" to "ouch" to "okay, walking now" in about a mile and a half. i walked nearly the entire last mile.

at that point, i was blaming my shoes, but by the end of the day, i suspected something more was up. coach said to stay calm, take a few days off. thursday i could barely walk so i wouldn't have been able to run anyway. friday i could walk pretty well and i still didn't try anything more, but i was optimistic. got up this morning, and it wasn't any better. yeah, i thought it was perfectly reasonable to expect it to get noticeably better each day. so... i wasn't too happy. i saw the whole marathon slipping away - all my time and effort, all my dreams.

as i was washing the breakfast dishes, the situation got the better of me and i started crying. i was still washing dishes, just standing there with tears running down my face, bouncing off my ample chest, and mixing with the dirty dishwater. i finished the dishes and moved to the couch and sat there weeping, fairly quietly. my old man walked thru, doing regular saturday stuff, and he was chatting to me and whatnot, then he looked at me and was like, whaaat?

i said, i am sad about my foot. he said, what is your plan? i said, well - i'll cry here for a while then i will go cry in the bed and later i'll get hammered. he was like, bad plan. he said, call your coach. i knew she was out running, and that made me feel even worse because i was supposed to be running with her, so i sent her a really pathetic email. he said, check with dr monkey, so i did, but there wasn't much he could do through text. he said, go to the orthopaedic clinic, and i called the two local ones, and they were closed. he said, go to the gym and get a therapeutic massage or go to the mall and get a foot massage. several phone calls later, i was headed to the gym for 30 minutes with austin.

now, here's the thing about massages at the gym: they are not kidding around. their "ocean sounds" CD volume is set to 11 and it's less ocean wave than screaming seagull. there's no incense, no warm stones, no scented lotion, no soft voices. they set about the business of working out knots with the determination of a recruit completing battlestations. it's intense.

this pronation is too hot! this pronation is too cold! this pronation is just right!

austin found the tender spot on my ankle pretty much right away, which i found to be encouraging because i figured if he could find it, maybe he could fix it. after 30 minutes of intensity, he said "i'm not a doctor, but..." (1) he didn't find anything that felt torn, broken, unattached, or otherwise badly injuried, (2) he found my achilles to be extremely tight and my gastrocnemiuses (gastrocnemii??) to be extremely knotted, (3) his interpretation of the pattern of calluses on the soles of my feet was that i ran with my weight on the outside of my feet, (i believe this is underpronation.) and (4) he concluded that the pull of the tight achilles and gastrocs was countered by the opposite pull of the underpronation and the result was a lot of stress on the ankle ligaments. he said (again), "i'm not a doctor, but..." and then he gave me some suggestions for stretching and icing and said he could do another 30 minutes on tuesday evening.

i like his conclusion because it makes sense and seems fixable. i also like that, after 30 minutes with austin, the tender spot had disappeared. not all the pain, mind you, but the worrisome eye of the tornado, the tell-tale heart, the X marking the twisted pirate's evil treasure -- is gone. if the X is gone, the evil treasure can't be far behind, right?