Getting Off On the Wrong Foot

***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?

…and now, the exciting conclusion of The Great Blister Disaster. As I mentioned yesterday…ok, ok, you caught me…not really yesterday. It’s a couple days later. But from a business perspective, it’s the next business day…so can we just go with that? …like you had a choice anyway.


What was I saying? Oh, yes, blisters.

So, the misguided, misdirected run in TX left me with two things. A new personal record for the longest distance run and a big honking blister, square on the ball of my foot. I spent the rest of the vacation largely ignoring it, and hoping it would just go away, but blisters aren’t fond of giving up their claim, if you don’t stay off of them. A few days after we returned from vacation, some friends of ours, who live roughly 3 miles away, were leaving on their own vacation. They asked if we could look in on their pooches, and I thought “Hey, perfect excuse to run…3 miles there, have a drink, feed the dogs, then get back out on the road, and run 3 miles back. What could possibly go wrong???”

So, early on Saturday morning – or at least what I thought of as early back then – around 7 AM, I strapped on my trusty Newtons and headed out the door. The sun was already up, the air was already still and it was already pretty darned warm. Not TX warm, mind you, but definitely mid-July in PA warm. Off I ran, towards their house, with all the best of intentions. The first mile went pretty smoothly, with some gentle inclines and declines. The second mile smacked me in the face with a pretty obnoxious hill, but I made it up the whole thing, without stopping to walk, no matter how badly I wanted to. I was rewarded for making it up this “monster” of a hill with a swift downhill, that really set my blister to rubbing. Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about that…

The end of the second mile brought me to a hill I had forgotten all about, despite having driven it hundreds of times, on my way to their house. I looked at it, panicked a bit, and then gave myself permission to walk…at the next mailbox. I managed to squeeze about 5 more “next mailboxes” out, before finally giving in, and walking the rest of the way up. As is so often the case, I was again rewarded with a downhill, which led straight to their house.

I scurried inside, in hot pursuit of air conditioning and a cold drink.

A good long(ish) while later, and I was faced with the harsh reality that I was going to have to go back. Suffice it to say that the trip home, was less successful than the trip there. It was hotter, sunnier, steamier and I was already tired, sweaty and cursing my blister.

By the time I got home, I was red in the face, out of breath and basically, downright miserable. I made the executive decision, then and there, that I was not going to take another step in running shoes, until that blister was gone. And I stuck to that. It’d be weeks before I ran again…and even then, I was hesitant, and unsure whether I even had the right to call myself a runner…