I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been having some pain in my right big toe. It’s been going on for about a year and a half, and I had first noticed it after I had (stupidly) run for 30 minutes barefoot on the treadmill. I read a book and it sounded interesting, okay? As a matter of fact, it felt awesome doing it. It was the following day when I first noticed the pain.

I thought that it was a running injury and I talked to my primary doctor about it, and he said it was turf toe, and gave me exercises to do. Which I didn’t really do, but whatever. The pain wasn’t constant, and I was still able to run with it, so I forgot about it.

Until a couple months ago, I decided to get it checked out for real, and went back to my primary, who referred me to a podiatrist. So a few weeks ago I saw this podiatrist and she had x-rays done (right there at the office, super convenient!). The good news is that it is not a running injury. The barefoot running likely just severely irritated what was already there. And that’s the bad news – what’s already there is arthritis. It’s bad news because it’s irreversible, but there are lots of things I can do for it. I’m avoiding walking barefoot. I’m wearing only good quality shoes. And when the stabbing pain is just too much (like today when it woke me at 4 am), I have a prescription compound cream I can rub on it, and that helps take the edge off.

So. Arthritis in my toe. Certainly not fun, but I’m glad to at least know what it is I’m dealing with. It’s not keeping me from running, though at times the stabbing will flare and force me to slow down and walk until it eases up. Just praying it stays that way, because I have plans to keep running for years to come. In fact, I have a 10k next month and a half marathon in October. The 10k is nothing special as it’s in my hometown and on local trails, so I’m really just paying for the accountability to keep training, and for the participation medal. The half marathon though, is an out of towner that I’ll be running with my new guide, Allison. It looks like a really beautiful course – “up north” in Michigan everything is beautiful – so I’m pretty excited about it.

That’s all the news for today. Tons of topics to write about, but so far the stories are all still in my head. I hope to get back in the habit of regular writing so I can get some of those stories out for y’all to read. Baby steps. Fresh starts. Every day is a new day. Shalom…