Woeful Wednesday

Wednesday unleashed a fury of pain.

After a 14-mile run on Tuesday evening, I wound up with tremendous agony in my right foot, which is sadly plagued with an angry case of plantar fasciitis. Ironically, long-distance running inseminated this PF, and yet I maintain my commitment and plow forward with my training. And after nearly nine months of carrying this discomfort, I’m ready to give birth to it.

The result? By Wednesday morning, I could hardly stand, let alone walk. And to top it off, I had an appointment with my physician to go over the results of my recent testing. Apparently, one section of my heart is angry as well, so I now must head to the cardiologist to find out the source of the problem. Throw in an echocardiogram and a stress test, and there’s just a lot of my plate.

(The only upsides are that my blood pressure and sitting heart rate both remain very low. And I lost a few pounds in the past two weeks without trying. Who knows what’s going on? I surely don’t.)

So between a cantankerous ticker and an enraged trotter, the focus on my projects has temporarily waned. At the moment, so many things seem to be uncertain, even though I clearly know what I want, what I need. And it’s more than Dove dark chocolate with a sage piece of advice.

What bothers me about this situation, however, is that I push my body to the limits, but two crucial parts of it are not cooperating.

For the past few years, my mantra has always been: “Respect the feet.” I have desperately tried: $15 socks, $140 running shoes replaced every 300 miles, stretching, icing, no high heels. In fact, I wear the oddest Keens; pink and grey they are, and odd-looking as well. But they stave off the pain, so fashion simply doesn’t matter.

But as for my heart? I don’t think there is anything more I can do. I don’t smoke, hardly drink. I eat healthy. I work out five, six days a week. My hope is that this is only a temporary problem, that my heart will heal, that I will be able to finish what I set out to do.

And have many more Wednesdays, only without pain.