Monday, April 20, 2009

Late breaking hard lesson from the 100 miler

I've written much about my blister experience at Zumbro.  Within about 5 days after the race, they had healed over enough to begin running with minimal discomfort.  I thought great, that was not too bad.  Now I've had plenty of small to large blisters over my running career.   Usually they come and go with little issue.  Often times they burst and still come and go with little issue, so I've been lulled into this false sense of security that things don't often go wrong with blisters.  Wrong answer...  2 days after returning to running, the blister on my left foot felt like it had returned.  I inspected the area and it seemed pretty well healed over, no signs of a traditional blister, but it was sore to walk on nonetheless.  The next day both the right and the left are feeling somewhat sore to walk on, and my left leg has a mysterious pain in the hamstring area (mysterious because I hadn't run in 2 days and it was a significant discomfort).  

Well it turns out running on popped blisters for 8 hours with dirty, sweaty feet then coming home in a tired stupor and taking a half ass shower before crashing for a day and a half might just be too much neglect.  The right thing to do would have been to clean them out better, put some antibiotic on them, and bandage them for a day or two.  Instead, both have ended up with an infection, and the pain in my leg is likely a swollen lymph node responding to the infection.  I went to the doctor and got antibiotics for such things, and it seems to be heading in the right direction now a day later, but I've been off my feet for 2 days already, and probably a couple more to come when my legs and spirit are more than ready to return to running.  Oh well, another hard lesson learned.


4 comments:

SteveQ said...

The gift that just keeps giving.

Take care of those feet, you might need them!

Carl Gammon said...

It never ceases to amaze me how much pain a small blister gone bad can cause. So, my little blister repair kit I carry to the races always has a small tube of Neosporin.

Steve said...

Ouch, recover soon, Zach. I guess I'm rather blessed with not having blister problems. I must say that the Injinji socks really help a lot too.

Londell said...

I was lucky after ST 100 when I would have did the same but I passed out sleeping and my girlfriend cleaned then well... I did not even wake... I guess she must be a keeper for that, as I passed out on the floor, without a shower...