Seems like forever since I had a post, reading the title too reminds me of how far behind I have fallen.
That was nine miles, my longest distance and a proud day. The next week I ran ten miles and it was much more difficult. I found that I felt I had to walk more than I had done for the 9 mile.
That was the last day I was able to run anything decent. I went on holiday, started a new job, and re-injured each calf one at a time and my gout flared up earlier this week. I am starting to doubt that the calf injury is some long term injury from the wagon incident.
So I started slow and short. 1 mile runs. day after day. that was going good, then that is when the gout struck. Gout is not some horrible disfigured disease, it is basically a crystal that forms in between the joints, usually the big toe joint. The crystal is ridged and digs into the joint, the joint usually swells up and the skin on the top of the foot becomes very sensitive to the touch. Even just the slightest touch (a bit more then a feather) makes a person want to scream. Putting foot-ware on can be impossible during a bad flare up.
They say the crystal is formed by too much uric acid in the blood stream and the way this comes about for me personally is that I get dehydrated and don't fully remedy it before bedtime. overnight the crystal forms and you wake up with a whammy of a sore foot. Sometimes I can feel it coming on, sometime during the day I will feel like my toe want to have the knuckle cracked in it, not sure if you know what I mean but it will feels stiff and the urge to crack it is persistent throughout the day. I am not normally a knuckle cracker so this gets my attention. This time I was not able to flush it out. When I get a flare up or I am able to detect one coming on, I will drink excessive amounts of water all day and right up until bed time. Slowly the crystal will dissolved away. It is important that you get the crystal to dissolve or disappear else it might do permanent damage to the joint.
So this time the flare up was light enough that I went for a run, it felt good, but taking the shoe off was painful. I drank extra water and took the rest of the day off.
Floppy footed running is the only way I can run with out pain in my calfs and even that is not always working.
