“This thing looks god awful.”
The little rubber platform was strapped over my good shoe. My injured foot was in a walking boot, which made one leg taller than the other. The Evenup brought the good side closer to the same height.
It made a world of difference in the hip pain almost immediately.
The actual problem was lower down. I had torn the plantar plate and ligaments around the sesamoids in my foot. Running was out. Hiking was out. I told friends I could still handle a car-camping weekend, but anything that required walking around with a pack was not going to happen.
Swimming was allowed. I got to the pool and managed about 1,300 yards in 25 minutes. I was not fast, and I still did not know how to flip turn. That felt like a much smaller problem.
The rest of life kept moving. Construction at 60 Broadway had finally finished after about a year, so I was scheduling the blinds to be reinstalled. I was trying to get a second opinion from a foot specialist. I booked one appointment while I was in California, and Google Calendar converted the time badly enough that I arrived three hours late.
I was also still helping coach 187 runners in PPTC's marathon group.
Berlin was three weeks away. People needed to know what “FF” meant on their long run, how fast to run the last five kilometers, and whether one rough workout meant the whole marathon cycle was falling apart.
FF meant fast finish. Run the final 5K at marathon pace.
One of the weekly emails had the wrong tempo workout in it. I sent a correction and explained that I had pasted in something from my personal plan by mistake. Somebody thanked me for handling the awkward correction.
“Not awkward at all. Teamwork makes the dream work.”
I could still write workouts. I could swim. The blinds could go back up. The shoe balancer looked terrible, but my hip hurt less.
At the moment, that was enough.