After a busy, but fun weekend in the River City with my bro and some friends, Sunday evening rolled around and the weather just happened to be quite lovely. So, naturally I decided that a long run was in order (I'm sure you're all shocked by this decision, haha :P). I headed out, excited to finally be at the point where I could run sans knee brace since my knee issues had pretty much disappeared after 2.5 months of running in my Five Fingers. Things were going well and I was feeling pretty good about my pace for the first several miles. Then, approximately 5-6 miles in, my right foot started bothering me. Being the stubborn & naive person that I am, I simply shrugged this off as a minor issue, reminded myself of the all important slogan "No pain, no gain" and kept pushing onward. By mile 8, my pace had slowed considerably, but I still had several miles left to get back home anyway, so I figured they would go by faster if I was jogging rather than walking and kept going. Finally, somewhere around mile 10, my foot struck the ground, I felt something crack, and needless to say, I had no choice but to stop jogging. I managed to hobble a few blocks to the local theater, where the ticket lady was kind enough to give me a bag of ice for my foot. However, I was still nearly 3 miles away from my apartment, it was going to start getting dark soon, and there was no feasible way for me to limp all the way home.
Luckily, a passerby stopped and asked if he could help in any way. I asked to borrow his phone to call someone to pick me up, but in this age of having every contact programmed into your phone, the only numbers I have memorized are my Mom's and Jon's...and they both live 2 hours away. So, my poor brother received a panicky, teary-eyed call from his little sis, briefly explaining the situation and asking him to call all of our mutual Richmond friends to see if someone could come pick me up. As luck would have it, everyone he called was apparently busy and nobody answered their phones. LOL. So, I sat on the sidewalk for a good 20 minutes, wondering what I should do. Then, a car drove up and stopped at the intersection. The couple inside looked over at me, asked if I was okay, and offered to give me a ride. I hesitated....Just like everyone else, my parents taught me never to accept rides from strangers. "Oh, well, I think someone might be on their way to pick me up, so I wouldn't want to miss them, but thanks so much for the offer!" To which the lady riding shotgun replied "Well how do you know someone is coming?" Me: "Well, my brother called some of his friends, so I'm sure one of them will come." Lady in car: "But what if they don't? Please get in the car." She had a good point. And desperate times call for desperate measures, right? So, I hobbled over, got in the car, and prayed that I wasn't going to be kidnapped and held hostage in someone's basement. Hahaha. Obviously, they turned out to be good people and I am grateful that they got me home safely. After retrieving my cell and calling my bro back to let him know that I had made it back safely, I debated whether my foot injury was worth braving an evening in the ER.
Around 11:30, my wonderful friend Jess accompanied me to the ER, where we proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait some more. A total of 3 hours actually. You know you have a true friend when they're willing to wait in the ER with you until 2:30 a.m. on a work night! Anyway, after looking at my x-rays, the doc determined that nothing was broken, diagnosed me with a "deep bruise," and sent me home with an ace bandage and orders not to run again until it felt better (ya think? LOL).
The next morning, I got a call from the radiologist, informing me that he had further examined the x-rays when he came in and discovered a crack in the second long bone of my foot. So after hobbling around for the past couple days, I went to my orthopedic doctor this afternoon and he put me in a very stylish boot (I wish! Haha :P)
Not sure how long I'm going to be hobbling around in this, but obviously my half-marathon training has been halted yet again :/ I'm also a bridesmaid in a close friend's wedding in August, so it must heal before then, or else I'm going to have to suck it up and find a way to walk around without this thing. But on a deeper level, maybe this was God's way of trying to teach me patience again. Not to mention the fact that since my Needle's Eye small group ended, I notice myself slipping slowly backward. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in a much better place in my walk than I was before Needle's Eye, but I need to find another group of young, Christian professionals to get connected with and make sure that I keep growing and moving forward, not backward.
Okay, on that note, I'm signing off to go watch "The Adjustment Bureau," which a friend loaned me to help keep me entertained while I'm kicking back on the couch, which is not something I'm accustomed to, by the way. Hopefully I'll be inspired to write about something more exciting than a fractured foot next time. LOL.
Have a great evening, y'all! :)
Are you trying to say that another Young Professionals Group will help teach you patience ("again" as you put it)? Let me be the first to sign on for that!!!
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