Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate...

I consulted my training log shortly afterward and discovered that this injury - which has kept me off the road for four infuriating days and counting - occurred on my 500th mile of the year.

The day's goal was to log 22 miles in a nice circuitous loop through northwest Medford, Winchester, Stoneham, Malden, Somerville, and back into Medford. It was 4 weeks and 2 days before my first marathon and this seemed like the ideal time to do my longest training run.

My pre-run planning was meticulous. 4 ounces of vegan "breakfast sausage" scrambled with 2 eggs. Banana with peanut butter. Diluted Gatorade laced with creatine and Vega electrolyte powder. I stretched for hours and fiddled with an ideal playlist.

Perhaps it was all the preparation that made it difficult to just throw in the towel when I misstepped from the sidewalk down to the road and rolled my left ankle under my full body weight. Perhaps I should have accepted that I hurt myself 1/4 of a mile into the run and hobbled back home. Perhaps the fact that I could still see my house when it happened was a sign. But I am stubborn and I really really hate when I make a plan and it gets derailed, and so I pressed on and ran 17 miles.

And now here I am, blogging about running instead of running. Rewrapping my ankle for the zillionth time and wondering if resting it on my desk while I type achieves enough elevation to be helpful. Maybe the sprain was as bad as it was going to be and the 17 miles I forced it to complete under duress didn't really make any difference. And considering how much time I spend training on the rocky, uneven, steeply-pitched trails at Middlesex Fells Reservation, it's a little embarrassing that this happened on a sidewalk in the suburbs.

While there's no telling where I'd be if I'd done some things differently on Friday, I can begrudgingly admit that two good things emerged from this.

1. With encouragement from my beautiful, patience-of-a-saint-having girlfriend Tianna, who has already taken in stride way more whining about my not being able to run than anyone should have to, I've decided to spend some time writing about running in general and marathon training in particular. But since I don't have the writing talent to put into words the adrenaline-suffused thrill I get from running, and since no one wants to read a blog that just announces distances, times, and routes every day, I thought I'd also write about my other passion: cooking. Since every serious runner eventually realizes that "gee, it's almost like there's a correlation between what I put in my body and the way that my body performs when I make it do physically challenging things," I've become just as attuned to diet as I am to my training. I've also recently cut meat entirely out of my diet. I'll be sharing my own recipes that are both meatless and runner-friendly.

2. Up until now, the idea of taking more than one day off from running in a row was unthinkable. Now it's looking like I'll be laid up for at least a week. If nothing else, my appreciation for the ecstatic joys of running has been reified tenfold.

When this sucker heals up, I'm going to hit the road with a vengeance.