Deepening Winter

I had developed a rather bad skin erasure problem on the pad of the big toe of my left foot, running in cooler weather here. Weird, I thought. I've never had that problem before.

So I rested and let it heal until it felt good. Then I went back out running, again in cool weather, and promptly got a painful deep bruise and blood blister in exactly the same place! So its time out for more healing.

Someone commented about how their toes tended to curl downward when their feet got cold. That explains why this unexpected problem crept up on me! I figured the cold on my feet made me "dig in" or "push off" with my toes more than normal. I'm thinking I need to put on a bandaid or something and keep running anyway. I hate taking too many days off from it!

I waited as long as I could stand for my fairly raw big toe to heal (3 days). Today I wrapped it up in a couple of bandaids and headed down to my favorite smoooooooth cement running path in Portland, OR and got in 6 miles. Temp outside was about 36 degrees, the coldest I've run so far this year. My toe was protected enough that I did no harm to it. I felt my left Achilles stiffening up, probably from the cold. I noticed my feet got fairly numb, so I had to try extra hard to follow good form techniques so as to not do them any damage. After my run, when my feet warmed up and I could feel them again, I was glad to find they were perfectly healthy and happy again!