Foot update and Blogger Meetup

Our fun Bay Area Bloggers Meet Up in SF for Fleet Week!!!

OK, I'm now behind THREE race reports but before I get to those, I wanted to do an update about my foot since my last blog post (in case you're not following me on Twitter or well, in real life, haha) and share some fun pics from a meet up organized by Courtney. Yes, this post is sooooooooo out of date now, it's not even funny, but oh well, I'm just gonna throw it out there.

Foot Update

After all my fussing and worrying, it turned out to be nothing. Well, it was definitely something... but nothing serious like a stress fracture or anything like that. (Thanks for freaking me out, Dad!!!) 

Immediately after Akron, my foot started hurting and I came down with a bad cold. (Forgot to take my marathoner friend's advice to double up on Vitamin C three weeks before and after the marathon.) When I finally returned home back in Cali, I took it easy and mostly rested. And started tweeting and blogging about my foot issue since what else was I going to do? Everyone was super helpful with their advice, suggesting painkillers and icing to reduce inflammation (right? I can't remember, haha) I made an appointment with a podiatrist just to make sure things were OK. Then my PT-in-training buddy, Kerry, asked more about where my foot was hurting. After I described it to her, she tweeted me this: "There are a couple nerves that from our calves, wrap around the arch. With those nerves are tendons anchoring the calf muscles. I'd take a tennis ball to the arch of my foot and calf to see if any of those tendons are pinching those nerves."

Now other people had suggested a tennis ball, too, but I didn't really understand why but after Kerry's explanation, I totally got it. I don't play tennis (no hand eye coordination) but thankfully, I received a tennis ball from Safeway last year at the Nike Women's Marathon. I immediately started rolling my foot on it and I could tell that she nailed the issue. I spent the rest of the day rolling my foot and icing it while watching TV. Good times. :P 

Within a day, I didn't notice any pain at all. I still went to the podiatrist and she did a pretty thorough examination on my foot. She applied pressure to certain areas and since I didn't feel any pain, she also thought I was in good shape. She took some X rays as well (since my other ones were um, unofficial) and everything looked good there, too. She did recommend orthotics just to be safe. I keep forgetting to check if my insurance covers it - did you know that they're around $500? For some reason, I thought they would be pretty intense but they just look like plain slip ins. I'll save that for a rainy day.

Anyway, I wish I had known that I just had some pinched nerves because I could have nipped it in the bud immediately after the race and skipped the whole freak out. But it was a good wake up call. Since then, I've acquired some new shoes with more support and have tried to do more stretching, especially with the calves.

So the key take-away is that it always pays to whine about your physical ailments on Twitter, FB, blogger, etc. (But, of course, see a professional, too, right?)

Bay Area Blogger Meetup

Earlier this month, Courtney organized a lovely blogger meet up in San Francisco. She did a fantastic job with this as she was able to enlist the support of Sports Basement (love!) to help host it during Fleet Week! This meant lots of snacks and drinks (Blue Moon, yum!!) and front row seats to the Blue Angels show.

"Make new friends, but keep the old..."

Here's the crew that came out to play that day:

Top Row: Alyssa, Jana, Cate
Bottom Row: Courtney, Teresa, Naomi, moi, Courtney, Annelies

It was a potluck so everyone brought something to share and Sports Basement supplied lots of treats, too:

It was a nice afternoon chatting with friends.

Hi Chews - whoever could have brought that???

 

And then afterward, we all headed outside to Crissy Field to watch the Blue Angels do fancy tricks for us.

Super fun day hanging out with our awesome running / blogging crew! Thanks again for organizing this, Courtney, and thanks also to Sports Basement for hosting us!