July started out well enough.
Running in the mornings; six miles, seven miles, nine miles. I was doing a pretty good job of keeping myself ahead of the "buzzard," on track to finish the 639 miles of the Great Virtual Race across Tennesee in plenty of time.
Andrea and I watched the Blacksburg July 4 parade, and got to see Matt and Nick and their fellow "Newsies" cast members in costume promoting the upcoming Summer Musical Enterprise production in August.
Everything was going swimmingly until BANG! One minute I'm walking around my house barefoot (while adulting and being productive as hell, I want you to know) and the next minute my pinky toe is throbbing, bleeding, and stuck out at an odd angle.
Once the not-nice words stopped spewing from my mouth and the tears of anger and frustration began, I texted Matt. He high-tailed it to my house and insisted on taking me to urgent care.
The x-rays showed it snapped clean in two and out of place, and long story short, the bone was set and my toes taped together, and I was sent home with crutches and a boot, with instructions to visit an orthopedist. Ortho says no running for a month. Walking is OK, just wear the boot fracture shoe to keep the toe from bending. What about hiking? Wait at least two weeks and wear shoes with a stiff sole but make sure they don't squeeze your toes. On second thought, come back in three weeks and then we'll talk about what you can do after that.
"Walking is fine." She didn't say how far I was allowed to walk. I wore the special shoe at first but ditched it after a couple of days. I have an old pair of Altra Paradigms that aren't my favorite for running, but with the thick sole and wide toe box I'm able to walk normally with minimal toe bending.
(Would YOU want to walk around in that big honkin' thing??)
(Much better.)
Over the next few days I increased my walking distance from a half mile at a time to one mile, then two, then three. Meanwhile, I had a trip coming up the following week to Memphis for Worldwide Cache Fest, a geocaching mega-event I had been looking forward to since forever ago. Geocaching generally involves walking, and I wondered if it might be too much. Not to mention the fact that temperatures were forecasted to be in the upper 90s to over 100 degrees F with a gazillion percent humidity. Would I be too miserably hot to enjoy myself?
In the end I decided to go ahead with the trip. I figured if it sucked I could come home.
Well, it most certainly did NOT suck. It was my third mega event, and I think I might have had even more fun than at my first one, Mingo Madness. It's almost a tossup, but I think this one wins by a hair.
So.....
Stay tuned for my report on Worldwide Cache Fest. It might require two posts!
Meanwhile, I've been walking between five and eight miles most days. I even went on an actual hike on Saturday. (Oops, I accidentally on purpose forgot I wasn't supposed to do that.) I'm still ahead of the buzzard, on pace to finish GVRAT before the August 31 deadline. Today I'm giving my toe a little bit of a rest ahead of my follow-up appointment tomorrow. It will be nearly four weeks since my injury. Fingers crossed I'll be cleared for running and hiking as much as I want!
