Running Loco: Bad Feet, Good Run ?

Hellllllllooooooooooooo Nurse! (Animaniacs flashback there)

So..... I had my doctors appointment with the podiatrist this week. The doc said that i have EXTREMELY flat feet, and said that my foot is what they call a "Z Foot". This basically means that my foot goes one way but my toes turn off at an angle (I guess I'm a weirdo). He also said that I could possibly be in early stages of Posterior Tibial Tendinitis, so he wants to see me again in a month. Before leaving he did write me a prescription for some Semi Rigid Custom Orthotics and said that they would benefit me GREATLY. The earliest appointment I was able to set was for Monday, March 13th. He said if I am having any problems in the meantime to continue with my goof friends Advil and Ice. He did say I could go pick up a pair of regular orthotics from a store like Foot Locker or something but they honestly will not do much of anything for me as they are made for people with "normal feet" and that I do NOT have "normal feet". (Didn't we already know that nothing about me was normal?) So, hopefully I should end up receiving my orthotics somewhere around the 20th and that can help me feel better and prevent the problem from getting worse.

Despite the pain, I had a 5K race race scheduled for Saturday (today). With the pain I had been feeling in my feet all week and any regular training runs I had this week resulting in sub par times, I was not expecting the greatest of results.

So, my running group, the 5Klub had a new member join today as my mom completed her first ever 5K event, the Fruitland Park Day 5K.

This was a smaller event that did not have online registartion, so we all opted to register on race day instead of mailing it in. The registration process was slow and did not feel the most organized (probably not the best start to my moms first ever race). But eventually we all were registed and were ready for the race to begin.

At 8am the gun went off and the field of only 125 was starting. Again, I was expecting to run the race in a time of somewhere around 26-27 minutes due to my injury problem. As it turned out though, my foot felt good the entire race and I crossed the finish line in a time of 23:12, setting a new P.R. and finishing in 15th place!!!

After finishing, I took a small cup of water and then turned around to go back onto the course and meet up with my mom and finish the race with her. When I got up to her, she had roughly 1 mile left to go. We crossed the finishline together, as my mom finished her first ever race in a time of 51:17 (I think that was her time).

Counting my mom, 4 members of the 5Klub ran in this race and 3 of us set PRs (the 4th member was only 63 seconds off of his PR). The other cool thing was I got 2nd in my age group and got a silver medal, while 2 of the other members received gold and bronze medals. With this rarity happening for us, we posed for an "Olympic Podium" picture and were then off to Bob Evans for a nice big traditional post race breakfast for all of us.

It is nice to know that one can set a PR in the same week as having foot problems and bad training. I guess this was a pretty good day