Sunday, January 30, 2011

Do you know what's worse than 7 miles on a treadmill?

No... really.... do you know of anything that's worse than that? Because let me tell you.. it's pretty brutal. The only thing that made it somewhat bearable was the eye-candy on the treadmill to my right (that'd be my husband, thank you very much).

I really, really wanted to run outside today, but there were several impeding factors. The first was the dang snow. Philly Runners message board indicated that The Drives are still not in great condition and I'm haunted by visions of a woman I saw about a month or so ago, making her way around the icy drives with two bloody, banged-up knees. A cautionary tale. Secondly, I'm still on blister patrol. Thankfully and finally, the huge blister on the inside of my big toe subsided (or popped, I'm not sure which) sometime last night, but I'm still worried about aggravating it too much. So I was worried about heading out for an 8.5 mile loop with the possibility that I'd be plagued by blister woes again. So, another treadmill run it was.

I didn't feel like losing my parking space and heading out to the gym, so I joined Seebo and trekked down to the USP gym. We jogged (pronounced YAWG-ed.... the 'j' is silent) the half mile there. Just a tease of running outside; enough to make me loathe the treddy all the more. It also helped that I had some new music on the Precious, courtesy of Seebo as well.

Now I'm tired. I ate a big, salty lunch... so now I'm thirsty and tired.

I just took some pictures of my left foot. Wanna see? Warning..... it's gross. Nah... I'm not going to post them. If you really want to see them, then you can leave a note in the comment section (and then I really wonder about what kind of person you are).

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Toe Woes

***** Disclaimer*****
The contents of this post may offend some and will likely disgust most. Proceed at your own risk. Thank you.

No, I'm not going to talk about blood blisters again, but I am going to talk about regular ole blisters. You know, the normal kind filled with that clear, watery liquid. For some reason, they've been showing up in between my great and second toes on my left foot. Gross. I know. It began when I started wearing my new shoes (also the blood blisters which, thankfully, have subsided), so naturally I attributed them to the new shoes (even though they are the same make and size as the ones I had previously). Now I'm thinking maybe there is more to it. I blame my bunions. My left foot bunion, to be specific.

For those of you not in 'the know' on all things bunion, they get progressively worse over time. What this means is that the big toe leans further and further towards the second toe. And this is what I think is happening here. My left bunion is worse than my right and I wonder if in it's lovely progression, it's pressing into the second toe enough at this point to cause some friction and hence, a blister, when I run.

At this point, this is just a working theory. Not sure how I'm going to test this hypothesis. I'm kind of hoping it just resolves itself. Or maybe it's back to the podiatrist for me. Which is a problem because the guy I like is out of network and by out of network I mean not at all covered by my crappy insurance (Keystone Health Plan East).

Anyway... besides being a blister sister, my running is going pretty well. I'm excited to run my tenth consecutive Broad Street this year! I'm not setting any lofty goals at this point ... other than I'd like to run it under 90 minutes which is very doable for me right now.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

le sang - part deux

I don't know what it is about blood blisters that inspire me to blog... but here I am again... with another blood blister and blogging. It's roughly in the same place as last time, on my left foot, on the inner edge, sub bunion (mmmmm). I'm blaming this one on my new shoes which, even though they are the same brand, model, and size as my last ones... seem to be a bit bigger and wider in the toe box.

Anyway. I had quite a bit of pain after I popped the last one (again... mmmmm), so I sought advice via the internet, of course. Apparently, you're not supposed to pop blood blisters due to the risk of infection. I'm pretty sure that's what happened last time. So, I'm leaving this one be. I also developed a regular blister on the underside of my foot between my big toe and second toe. Weird - that's never happened before. I blame my mother for my cursed feet.

Still, I had a pretty good run today, considering it was a treadmill run. It was just too damn snowy, oh yeah... and windy. I hate wind. Have I mentioned that? I've been trying to make peace with the wind, but today I just wasn't feeling it. So off to LA Fitness I went.

If conditions had been more favorable, I would have ran the drives so I set out to run 8.5, just as if I were on the drives. At this point, I know every inch of the drives so well that I can pretty much visualize where I'd be, based on what the treadmill distance gauge measures. I like that.

Felt like an easy 8.5 miles, surprisingly. But like automatic car unlocker-doohickies and ATM deposits, I just don't trust treadmills. I wonder how accurate they are. According to the treddy, I was running sub 8:30 miles for all but the first two miles. I'm hoping that it was accurate, that I really can sustain that pace and feel pretty dang comfortable - except, of course, for the two blisters developing along the way.