2008 started off awesome for me. I had joined Deeptone and Slim4Life, and I was in shape and feeling fit. The kids were doing great, the dogs were settling in; by January of 2008, our youngest dog, Scout, was 9 months old and starting to turn into a real dog rather than a goofy puppy, so life was getting easier.
In July, though, as I've written about before, I broke my little toe. I was hanging out at the indoors pool at the Broadmoor, and I slipped on some wet tile. It was actually quite lucky that all I did was break the toe. I remember starting to fall, and then all of the sudden I wasn't falling. I had no memory of my foot impacting the railing, but that was the only thing that kept me from falling and either breaking a tailbone or, even worse, cracking my head against the tile. So the broken toe was actually lucky!
Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to exercise with a broken toe. Broken toes are really more annoying than anything, and I worked hard not to let it impact my life too much. My swollen pinky toe wouldn't fit into regular shoes, so I wore flip flops the rest of the summer. Two happy, energetic dogs, though, don't allow me to sit at home with my feet up for an entire summer, so I gamely flip-flopped around the dog trails. The dogs could run, but it's hard to work up a sweat flip-flopping. Not a lot of exercise there.
Most of the time when I walk the dogs, they trot by my side, especially during the summer when it's hot out. They're pretty well-behaved, even when an entire contingent of people in wheelchairs passed us on East Boulder Creek Trail. I was worried the dogs would lick the faces of the people and try to get in their laps, but overall the dogs behaved, and the people seemed pleased with the amount of attention the dogs gave them rather than annoyed. But as soon as the dogs jump into the creek and back out again, they have this game they like to play where they chase each other at full speed, then one grabs the other's tail, and the two of them tumble, literally head over heels, still at full speed. Usually when they zip past me, I would stand still and let them go. Unfortunately, one day as we were flip-flopping at about the furthest point from my car at East Boulder Creek Trail, the dogs tumbled right into the back of my legs, dumping me on my butt and elbow. I had to walk back the mile and a half with blood pouring down my elbow, while the dogs didn't seem to be a bit concerned about the entire episode. Luckily, the elbow was only bruised, not broken, but it did impact my abilities to do Deeptone for a few weeks when combined with a broken toe.
Surely, at this point, there wasn't much else that could go wrong, was there? I was actually feeling lucky still -- the broken toe could have been a broken tailbone, the bruised elbow could have been a broken elbow. Things were looking up! About three weeks later, I was heading down the steps of the deck to pick up the dog poop, and out of the blue a wasp stung me in the leg. Lucky I'm not allergic, right? It turned out you don't actually have to be allergic to these things, though. Somehow, the one that got me was heinously poinsonous, and within a couple of days I had a maroon ring on my leg about 3 inches in diameter, and redness that literally spread in a 12 inch diameter. You know it's bad when the doctor says, "Wow!" when he looks at it. "That's really bad!" I think was his exact quote.
So a full round of Prendisone later, an elbow that had finally healed, and a toe that was mostly healed, I started back running, but I did so very responsibly, running a little at a time and building slowly. When I had finally built up to three miles, feeling good, like maybe I had beaten back all of the crazy happenings, I developed plantar fasciitis. For the uninitiated, it's not pleasant. It's kind of like being back to the broken toe, but in the soft part of the foot where your heel meets your arch.
Now I am starting 2009 with orthotics in my shoes and hope that they will eventually cure the plantar fasciitis. I don't think that's a full cure for all that ails me, though. I'm pretty sure I need a good dose of luck. I'm not superstitious, but if you see me with a four leaf clover or an old lucky shirt that hasn't been washed in ages, you'll know why.