Always Being Hurt

I listened to an episode of the Citius Mag podcast the other day where Chris was interviewing Kate Murphy, a star high-school runner who had recently medically retired due to a rare vascular condition. She was a bubbly nineteen-year-old who was quite matter-of-fact about her condition, but what stuck out to me was when she said, “I started associated running with always being hurt.”

Me too, buddy.

In April of 2016 I finally had the chunk of bone spur (ahem, “loose body”) removed from my big toe, since it had started to become painful with every step instead of just intermittently stiff. Because my doctor suggested that physical therapy wasn’t necessary and I was happy to not have extra shit to do, I didn’t do PT. LOL, great call 2016 Joan.

So here I am in 2019, three years later, still dealing with this dumbass toe. I’ve always been more of a supinator when walking and running, and that plus an overly stiff toe and forefoot probably led to my ankle break last October. Now I have to re-learn a healthy gait, which hey, I probably should have taken care of a few years ago BUT the bigger problem is constantly associating running with pain.

The idea of signing up for races now is so loaded. Will I even get to the start line? As an extremely risk-averse person, the idea of signing up for a stretch-goal type race feels more like setting myself up for disappointment than an exciting goal to motivate me to do my heel raises. For now, I’m focusing on short triathlons, since swimming and biking are both areas where I can see significant improvements. I’m crossing my fingers that mojo carries me through any mentally and/or physically painful running workouts this summer.

Which brings me to…writing! I barely read a book last year and it took an end-of-2018 inventory to realize that, which led me to actively decide that was not how I wanted to live my life. I’ve been paying for this domain name for at least two years (#buildingapersonalbrand), so I may as well use it. Instead of ignoring my feelings about running and racing, I’m going to articulate them here, try to dive into what I’m afraid of, and how I can get over the mental hurdle of associating running with pain. I might talk about books too! Because my writing has devolved, and even though I work in spreadsheets for most of the day, I want to at least have the ability to sound like an intelligent human and not a robot who barely finished 4th grade.

So join me on this journey into blogging about a specific topic, trying to figure out Squarespace, and making time in my life that isn’t scrolling through cute animals on Instagram.