2 hours

So, this morning I decided to test my foot out again and went for a run out at Shorncliffe. No idea how far I went, perhaps 15km? I ran from Sonomas out to the other side of the old bridge at redcliffe and back. There was a little walking in there... not that I was killing myself, more that I was taking it easy.

The old bridge is perfect for intervals (not that I was doing any!) there are lampposts every 25m or so. I saw some poor fisherman who had put a fishhook right through the skin on the back of his hand. Owwwwww.

As I ran (pointedly ignoring foot) I was contemplating whether I might be crazy to attempt to train for the GCM in 8 weeks. I mean, I could cover the distance, just for fun. Might take me six hours to finish and it would probably HURT like a bastard afterwards, but I could....

I might just do it, even just so I can squarely give the giant finger (or should that be toe?) to the foot-gods.

Who knows. Tomorrow morning is the Mount Mee run. I might just do that, too.

Bone scan results

Well, I finally got my bone scan results today. No sign of a break, a fracture or a bone tumour (aren't I glad my doctor didn't tell me he was looking for that until I knew I didn't have one? LOL)

This is good since it means there's nothing structurally wrong with my foot, save for the usual wear associated with runners, apparently. It's also bad because I now just have to try to tough out whatever is wrong with it. It still hurts and I still don't have any answers. I feel like I would like a bloody reason for the WEEKS I've had to take off! LOL!

Anyway, that's not going to happen and I'm back to square one on not being able to afford the podiatrist, so I've started taking the maximum dose of anti-inflammatories for a week and have thrown in a daily glucosamine tablet for ever after.

Hopefully things will improve.

At least I can possibly have a crack at the Mount Mee 10km on sunday.

Exhibition

Well, still no foot news I'm afraid. I've rung twice and they still haven't gotten back to me!

But anyway, in the meantime (and because some of you have asked) Here's an invite for my upcoming exhibition, 'Say Cheese' at the Queensland Centre of Photography.

It opens on Saturday, 5 May at 33 Oxford Street, Bulimba and the show runs until 27 May.

For more details, check out the news section on my website at: http://www.hannahbroom.com

Bonescans and Brisbane Marathon Bag Lady

Went to have my bonescan. Definitely not the most pleasant thing I've ever done - they inject you with radioactive isotopes, then you have to wait around for two hours for it to go through your system, whilst drinking tons of water. Then they hog tie your feet in various positions (which hurt with a sore foot!) and videotape the glowing stuff moving through your blood stream. Anyway, four hours later it was done and tomorrow I can ring to see if my GP has the results. Hopefully they'll give me them over the phone. If not, it's another visit to the doctor.

Today I went to help out at the Brisbane Marathon in the baggage area with toasty and my running buddies Ronnie, Tracey and Jill. When we got there nothing was set up. Within minutes, throngs of marathon runners had descended on us and about 45 minutes of madness ensued. We managed to get all the bags in rows and ordered by number though. There's something very satisfying about that (must be the virgo in me!) and no one had to wait more than a couple of seconds when dropping off or picking up. Had a lovely time with the gals and toasty, joked and gossiped as we went. Got to say hello to most of the usual suspects too. There were quite a few amazingly rude people too, who just slammed their bags down when dropping off and then when they picked them up, they just grabbed them and walked away without saying anything. Naughty wench that I am, I started yelling 'YOU'RE WELCOME!" in a bright, cheery voice as they departed. I cannot, cannot, cannot abide that sort of rudeness. Even if we weren't volunteers, it's so unnecessary and ungrateful. But anyway, enough of my soap box.

By the time we'd done most of the baggage, my foot was really hurting. It's been feeling a lot better the last few days (typical, after tests and all!) but today it ached like hell. I felt really jealous of everyone out there running! I also remembered how horrific my half was at the race last year and by the gods, after all this, next year, I'm soooooo going to whip it's arse!

I think the realisation that all plans and goals for the rest of this year are on hold is finally sinking in a bit. Bit depressing. I am thinking that if the foot issue does turn out to be soft tissue, I should give my foot another two or three weeks off before returning to running, and that doesn't leave me enough time to get into shape for the GCM. After having done the full last year, I feel weird about dropping down to the half there.

Anyway, whinging doesn't get me anywhere, that's for sure. Will just have to suck it up and get on with things.

Congrats to everyone who did the Bris Mara this morning. It looked so hot, you poor things!

xray and bloods okay

Well, my xray and bloods came back clear, so I'm off to have a bone scan on thursday. It's going to cost $550 or so and I think I will get some of that back on medicare. I really, really, really hope so anyway. If I don't I'm going to be in trouble but I'm at the point where I just want to know whats wrong. Tomorrow I'll ring medicare and check.

Even though it is good that both the xray and bloods were clear, it's sort of horrible too because I don't have any answers. I feel like maybe I should just be putting up with it and running through it...which is what I was doing previously. It's not an unbearable sort of pain, it just won't go away. Maybe if I just give it more time it will heal itself..... if it does turn out to be just some sort of soft tissue injury I'm going to kick myself repeatedly. Though obviously not with my right foot!

Anyway, nothing to do but wait until next week I guess... still a cranky, fat and generally miserable Hannah til then :(

What the Doc Said

So I woke up this morning and (Carpe Diem) rang the doctors. Went in and he poked and prodded it and on monday I'm going for a blood test (to rule out gout, of all things! I thought only old men who drank too much got gout) and another xray to check for stressies.

If the xray comes back clear, he'll then send me for a bone scan. Depending on what happens with that, the next step would be a trip to the bloody orthopaedic surgeon. (*freaks out and attempts deep breathing*)

Id quite like it to be gout actually, since that's easily treated. Or even a stressie that's not yet healed. Or basically anything that doesn't involve letting anyone with a big fat needle/knife near my foot!

I think, ladies and gentlemen, that all 100 mile bets are off until I get the results :(

Soooooooo unbelievably annoying. But at least there's now a plan of attack, even if it does suck.

Fatter, Fitter, Fubar foot!

I started bootcamp this week and did reasonably well on the fitness test. Blitzed everyone on the leg strength test by about a minute though, which was a nice surprise (must be the hilly trails!) Also did personal training and confessed to my trainer that I've fallen quite spectacularly off the diet wagon and practically have to start all over again.

Anyway, the less said about that, the better. I'm back on lite n' easy and even if I'm fatter again, I feel I'm getting a bit fitter. Ran on wednesday night and it wasn't quite as difficult as the week before. I did however manage to stick my foot in a hole and twist my ankle (the other side to my existing foot problem) but thankfully I was able to run it out and it felt fine the next morning.

My foot is still not right. Yesterday morning after bootcamp, I walked from the train to work and I almost cried at the constant stabbing pain through the joint. Being in a reasonable amount of pain for this long has just made me completely and utterly miserable. I'm still doing my best to hold on to my denial and run because currently it's the only thing that making me feel (temporarily) better. It actually does feel better whilst I'm wearing trainers though, possibly because it's cushioned. I run, it hurts, I rest, it feels better so I run, then it hurts again. Repeat. The only option is to just go to the bloody doctor, I guess :(

I know I could be doing serious damage by continuing to run on it without having it checked. I know that the longer it carries on, the more unlikely it is I'll be up to the 100 miles or any race really. I don't really want to go into details here, but there's a lot in my life that is a struggle currently and this is all just the bloody icing on the bloody cake. Nothing is more ugly and unproductive than a good dose of self pity I know... I just have to pull myself up by the bootstraps and do what I can to make the changes that will solve the problem.

3:20 of trails and some very evil hills!

Yesterday, I went to the Intraining Easter Egg run at the West End. Unfortunately, once I got there, I decided not to run - partly because they wanted $25.00 which I couldn't afford (I had thought it was $15.00 - I'm sure it used to be!)

More annoyingly, my foot is *still* not right which is what sealed the deal. I wore heels the day before at work from 8am - 11pm (it was a long day!) so that may have had something to do with the pain kicking off again.

I'm trying not to launch into a big whinge about my foot but it's driving me absolutely insane. I go for a run (or seemingly, wear heels!) then I have to take one or two days off for it to settle, then I think perhaps it's okay, run again and it hurts again. I'm thinking I'm going to have to go and beg the doctor to see if they can scan it for free. I just want to know I'm not doing any more damage whilst I'm blatantly ignoring the problem and running anyway. Bad, bad me. I know it's naughty.

On that note, I was very, very naughty this morning and ran/walked/ran for *drumroll* 3:20 on the trails around Mount Cootha. It was such a perfect morning this morning, I just couldn't help myself. Gorgeous clear sparkly blue skies, just the hint of a cool breeze, the temperature is perfect and everything smells faintly like eucalyptus. I've had a map of the Mount Cootha trails pinned next to my computer for a couple of months and decided it was time to go and test some of them out.

I started out at the JC Slaughter Falls (for ease of parking!) and ran the Hovea track and then the Aboriginal art trail. It's not very long and somewhere along the way I found a fork which led up into the bush for a couple of kms so I decided (feeling all adventurous) to follow it and see where it led. Turns out it was a closed trail which had been shut for revegetation. Oops. Shame it's shut, it was lovely. It came out somewhere on the usual road to the top, so I turned right and ran up the hill towards the cafe. I consulted my little map and turned onto the Honeyeater track. Fun going down, nice views along the way. Down the bottom of that, I did a quick loop around the Butterfly Trail and had a bit of a look at the 'enviro hut' thing they've got down the bottom. By the look of the map, somewhere it links up to the 'Kokoda track' and a few others I'd love to do, so I'll have to consult the street map and go back. It'd be great to have run every single trail on the mountain at least once.

On the way back up, I think I came across the Reservoir track (not on my map) which is quite short in terms of distance, but has some almighty hills in it. Parts of it were so steep, I actually had to stop twice whilst WALKING up it to catch my breath. Mental note: perfect spot for some six foot training, I'm thinking.

Climbing back up the Honeyeater track, I then ran back towards the cafe, then veered left down the Summit Track which leads back towards where I'd parked. Stopped for a quick toilet break and then turned out of the JC Slaughter Falls car park and went left, past the Hoop Pines picnic area and the Silky Oaks one.

Just after that, I turned up into the Powerful Owl Track. Holy crap! I wasn't feeling too fresh after a couple of hours anyway, but there are some more BIG hills on that one! Headed for Channel 9, but then detoured to Simpson Falls and then the Euginia Circuit. I had to walk the majority of that one - heaps of loose rocks and tree roots. Interesting seeing where the falls where (or at least, where I assume they should be - was completely dry) and hopped across the falls to the other side, where the trail snaked up the hill again.

Eventually, I wove my way back to the Powerful Owl trail and discovered that going down the enormous hills was a lot worse than going up! The sensation was rather like standing on marbles whilst on the edge of a cliff. How I didn't end up going arse over tit all the way to the bottom, I don't know!

Feeling quite pleased with myself (and glad to be back at sea level!) I then headed back along the road to JC Slaughter Falls, finishing with 3:20 on the clock. Quite how far I went, I've got no idea. I'm inclined to think that it wasn't actually very far - most of the trails are pretty short, and even though I ran both ways along most of them, I don't think it added up to much. That said, trails take practice and walking trails at a reasonable pace isn't always easy, either.

Time on feet, baby.

Anyway, next on my agenda (foot-willing!) is working out what order to do the trails in, in order to run every single trail in the same session. That ought to take me up to 6 or 7 hours, at least! Perhaps I'll post it on Coolrunning and see if anyone has a preplanned route.

20km Glasshouse Night Run

Last night I headed up to the Glasshouse for a night run. I was interested to do it because the only time I've run in the dark was when Suzannah and I did the 50km last september.

Drove up to the start and met running buddies Vegie, Di and Schultzy. There were about 27 starters, with around seven of those doing the 20km. Tanky was doing the 10km. I felt quite good after the 5km that morning and was glad I hadn't pushed myself too hard - particularly when running up the path to the top of Wildhorse.

It was a really interesting experience for me - I learnt heaps in preparation for the big one: I learnt that I am going to have to carry insect repellent with me during the night (or I may be anaemic by the end of the run!) that I desparately need some trail shoes (nothing like kicking rocks to wake sore toes up!) and ditto with a nuclear-bright headtorch. Schultzy did a most impressive commando roll over a tree branch so I think the more light the better in my case!

The run also showed me just how work I'm going to have to do to get my fitness back to where it was (and beyond!) which was a bit depressing, but can't be helped! I had a few walk breaks and I noticed my comfortable pace was much slower than the others. It wasn't hard to keep my legs going exactly (I guess I can thank all the walking up hills and weights sessions for that) but moreso my breathing - after a time I had to shut up and just listen to the others chatting rather than joining in.

After the run we all headed back to the servo for a drink and some of Kelvin's yummy chocolate things. I gained another two volunteer pacers for the 100 miles. I had been feeling a bit like perhaps the 100k was a more realistic option, but now I feel fired up to just shoot straight for the big one.

My foot held up reasonably well. It is slightly sore this morning, but a couple of days rest should sort that out. Robert Song asked if I know what caused the stressie in the first place: to be honest, I'm not sure - when I look at the different factors involved I think it was probably a combination - I was wearing old (dry!) shoes for part of the race which had no bounce left in them at all. I was only walking in them, but my instinct is that they would have had an effect. I was also trying to speed walk off the balls of my feet and I've never done that before really. I'd also been very slack with my training prior to the event, not running more than 2 hours or so and none of that on the flat. The fact I'd been running hills so much might have contributed.

I'm going to get Uncle Phil to check my current shoes on wednesday. They're pretty new so I feel confident they're okay, but it'd be nice to rule them out. I'd really, really, really like to buy some trail shoes, but short of a financial miracle, it's not going to happen for a month or two. I have a plan or two in place though - may do a bit of graphic design work on the side to generate the money.

Today is a rest day... tomorrow looks like it will be circuits and a run, or a run at the very least.