Racing injured

I did a 12K trail race tonight and oh man, it was the hardest terrain I've ever run! There was a tiny stretch on pavement and then the rest of it was in trees along the river, which meant that there was deep sand interspersed with muddy sand, giant roots, fallen trees, and super-slick pounded sand dotted with deep puddles. There were a couple of creek crossings where you basically slid all the way down. I LOVE trail running but I've always run before on hard-packed dirt, mud, wood chips, or rock...never sand!

With about three miles to go I felt a distinct "pop" in the arch of my left foot, which has been bothering me for the last couple of weeks, and then this CRAZY shooting pain that felt like I was jumping on a knife every time my foot touched the ground.

I quickly evaluated my options--basically alone in the woods (there were only 29 runners and we were really spread out) and no support teams, so I had to get back on my own. I realized that I was better off going as fast as I could so I could minimize the time I was on my feet, so I just ran on my little knife-foot for the next 3 miles until I finished up and then peeled off my shoe to check out the swelling. My awesome running buddy who had crossed a minute before I did (she was ahead of me before the foot-pop and I'd told her to just go) has a PhD in nursing so she quickly grabbed a cup of cold water and had me hold it against the swelling, then she drove us home & got me set up with KT tape and ice. But yowza this thing hurts SO bad! It's been four hours and I still can't walk. This could be pretty interesting. I'm about 80% sure it's plantar fascitis but I'm worried about that pop.

(PS--what got me through those last 3 miles was a) being intent on passing the girl ahead of me--and I totally smoked her by 4 minutes--and b) wanting to make sure that NOBODY passed me and c) thinking about Scott Jurek winning the Western States 100 & the Hardrock 100 when he was injured. If he can run for 100 miles with an ankle the size of a grapefruit, I can run for 3). If I recall correctly my last mile was about 8:30ish because there was no way I was letting the people trail me slip past (it was also finally out of the sand so I could finally run normally!) In a weird way I almost felt stronger running through the pain, because I was like, whatever, this isn't going to stop me! (And when I saw somebody gaining on me I totally started trash-talking myself. I thanked her after the race for motivating me and she laughed and said, "Well, I finally realized I wasn't going to catch you!" I love the running camaraderie--everyone is racing but everyone is still SO nice and yelling out things about mud pits or fallen trees to avoid, etc.)

12K; division place 2 (the #1 in my division won for women overall and was CRAZY fast!!), sex place 4, overall place 16; 1:12:34 and 9:44/mile. Definitely not one of my best times, but a much harder run than I'd anticipated...I've never run on such deep sand (or any sand!) and I can definitely see the gap in my training!

7/2

Well, I'm doing the runs, but it's really hard recording them all!

8.63 miles through the woods tonight. Lots of hills and a beautiful run! Around 9:02/mile.