Friday, July 31, 2009

Stress Fracture and Das Boot

Finally... This morning the sports doc confirmed what I suspected all along, I have a stress fracture in the right ankle. That sucks, yes, but I've been over that for a while. I'm actually pretty damn happy now. No joke! It's great to know for sure what's up and that I can formulate a game plan.

However, the game plan won't be decided for sure until the MRI is done next week and they can see the severity of it. The physician's assistant did point it out on the x-ray though. Hopefully, I'll just be out 6-8 weeks. Long time, but I can deal with that. Was glad it was this and not another soft tissue related injury, which are a lot trickier to treat a lot of the time.

I also feel even better now about dropping at Western States. I was feeling the stress fracture about three weeks prior to the race. Makes having to quit at mile 43 because of this issue (and subsequent quad pull because of the altered gait) a bit easier to swallow.

In the meantime, I get to where this really cool, medieval looking pneumatic boot. It's actually pretty comfortable. The little gray oval you see at the top is the air pump which you press to fill the bladders around the foot to hold it in place.

9 comments:

Rick Gaston said...

When I saw the pic on Facebook i thought you finally broke your foot on someone's A**. I was following the entertaining discussion on the ultra list. I feel the same way about soft tissue vs bone. I did a number on my tailbone and supporting glute muscles when I fell on a sailboat a couple weeks ago. Bone feels fine, the muscles are driving me crazy and I got a race coming up.

Runner Tammy said...

Jamie,

I am so sorry to hear about your foot. I hope you have a speedy and successful recovery now that this issue has been identified.

See you on the trails,
Tammy

Sarah said...

I'm sorry about you're injury, but you are so right. A bone injury is much easier to deal with than a soft-tissue injury. 6-8 weeks will be over before you know it. Take care!

Michael said...

The other leg looks quite strong - maybe you could one leg hop a 5k to get your adrenaline rush :) If not your cup of tea, enjoy your time off and consider it your yearly recovery period - then run hard all winter through the blistering cold and maybe do a snowshoe marathon!

Rest up bud! Glad to hear you know what you're dealing with and have a plan.

Andrew said...

That does look medieval.

Paige said...

Yea, that is a nice lookin' left leg you got there :) Six weeks ain't nothin' in the grand scheme of things...I bet you'll be back at it before I'm fully recovered from Vermont :)

You should bedazzle that boot, ya know, keep it fun and all :-)

Love2Run said...

Forced rest does have it's good side you know. All that spare time to do the things you've been putting off. Good luck with it!

Grellan said...

That's a serious looking boot alright. Glad to hear that you have finally identified the problem and that the road to recovery is mapped.

Ultrathoner said...

That's too bad about your injury but at least you figured out what's going on. In hidnsight, it was good that you stopped at WS100. It could have turned out much worse had you kept going.

It will be tough to go wthout running but in the long run (pun not originally intended, but heck, we are ultrarunners after all), you will become stronger and better than before.

Good luck!