A week of firsts

Let’s start with Tuesdsay evening: as I was finishing up Wednesday’s spin class, I was bending my toes on the carpet and suddenly felt a pull on one of my toenails. Ouch! Felt like it was kind of ripping so I immediately walked into the bathroom to grab some clippers. As I bent over my foot, there was my second toe with ITS TOENAIL HANGING OFF.

OMG.

I have heard about you runner folk and your black toenails that fall off, but it has NEVER happened to me before! In all the years of tri I always managed to have shoes that never caused black & blue toenails. But back in January Matt and I had gone on a hike and as we were running down the trail to beat darkness, my left second toe kept jamming into the front of my hiking shoes; I definitely had a hunch it would be bruised. Sure enough, it eventually turned black.

Little did I know it would FALL OFF. How WEIRD is that?! It’s like my toe managed to form a protective layer between the skin and the nail so that when the nail DID come off, it was kind of no big deal. But I’m still weirded out by the fact that my toenail just kinda…fell off!

Onto Friday: my first ART session. For those not in the know, that’s Active Release Therapy (ART). Matt has been going to Patrick Pisenti, DC for a few different ailments and I know plenty of other people (including Holly) who have sung his praises for whatever injuries they were dealing with.

I’ve been dealing with this scar tissue in my right quad for awhile now and it hasn’t ever gotten any better. It affects me most when I run but I still feel it when I swim and bike and even in yoga. My right quad generally feels weaker than the left. I was just tired of feeling it and feeling injured.

Last November I felt so angry after my last XC race because it really flared up to the point of causing so much pain I had tears in my eyes and it was all I could do just to finish the damn thing. This stupid injury essentially ruined what should have been an awesome race for me. That was really when I decided to hang up running for awhile.

So I decided it was time for me to visit Pat. ART is PAINFUL! But I’m hoping it works. I’m supposed to follow up my treatment with the good ol’ foam roller and see how it goes for a couple weeks before I make any follow up appointments.

Onto the weekend! Hope everybody has a wonderful Easter weekend and gets some great rides/runs/swims/egg hunts in!