Denial....its a really pretty place to visit...but you shouldn't stay too long

I haven't written in a while. I've been avoiding the blog for a number of reasons....none of them really good, but most of which are legitimate excuses for being at least a little bit of a slacker. Problem is, now I have the accountability of the blog. And just like when you were young...no matter how many days you faked sick, you were eventually going to have to go to school and face the math test, or the mean girl, or the boy who embarrassed you...whatever silly thing that you were avoiding because it felt like the end of the world.

So here's what you've missed....

Last week I found myself lying flat on my back staring at a fuzzy TV screen waiting to see if the black and white dots organized themselves into a picture of a very early end to my tri season. Not a fun place to be. If you listened you could hear what $700 being just flushed down the toilet might sound like. And you could see my pants size increasing exponentially.

The thought of it was just depressing. Too depressing to blog about.

So what brought me to contemplate my '08 retirement? Well, mostly pain. Very inconveniently placed pain. Inconveniently located in the very near vicinity of my previous stress fracture.

Now for the record, I'm known to visit the land of "denial" on a fairly regular basis. Especially when it comes to the aches and pains that come along with working out. In fact, in 2002 I was so completely planted in "denial" that if my little imaginary vacation destination had a government I probably would have been elected mayor. My extended stay in denial caused me one stress fracture (left tibia) and one stress fracture turned total fracture of the medial talus (that's a little bone in the arch of your foot).

Um...oops.

So this time, when that little ache started getting to the "annoys me even on my walk to work" stage I figured I'd bypass denial and head straight for the doc.

I ended up getting a bone scan (on Thursday), and a prescription for Physical Therapy (which I start tomorrow). I haven't heard the outcome of the bone scan, but I can say that after two weeks of not running the pain has almost completely disappeared (whew!). So ideally the bone scan would rule out a possible stress fracture and PT will have me on track to some pain free running after 4-6 weeks of working out some imbalances (and some sort of bursitis and knee thing that the doc wrote on my Rx in a medical language I do not understand).

Time will tell, I guess. I'm hoping for the best.