Well, this explains a few things

Today I learned about something called the plantaris tendon. I never knew this little strip of tissue existed before 8:30 this morning. Now I know far too much about it.

Lower leg of doom

See that thin blue strip? That's your plantaris tendon. Yours is probably fine.

Mine, however, is ruptured. Oh, and my medial gastroc and soleus muscles are torn. For even more fun, I even have a touch of the achilles tendinitis. Why not toss that onto this steaming pile of crap as well?

I can pinpoint the moment this bad boy let go: mile 6 of the Cleveland Half on May 15. It felt like someone took my right calf muscle and ripped it in two. Like any overly stubborn runner, I powered onward and finished the race. Dropping out for the dreaded DNF is not in my vocabulary, even though I could barely hobble forward. I finished that race in 2:28, my slowest half ever. But I finished.

No wonder it hurt so much! I WAS RUNNING WITH A RUPTURED TENDON AND TORN MUSCLES.

I still haven't run since that day. I was hoping to run this coming Saturday with the Engineer at the Canal Days 5K near Ft. Wayne because my leg has felt great, almost normal, for several days. I mentioned this at my appointment today and the radiologist was like "That's not a good idea."

While I won't need surgery, I may be in for a round of physical therapy. I will see my sports medicine doctor at the end of the month for a follow-up and I will hear what she has to say. Right now, however, the course of action can be summed up thusly:

• No running
• No running
• NO RUNNING!

 I'm in for a lot of elliptical, biking, rowing and strength training. 

These recent revelations make the following picture, taken near the end of the Cleveland race, quite bittersweet. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, and I knew I was almost done. I hadn't seen the Redhead yet and I was worried I had been too slow to see her at mile 7 (I didn't know she never even made it there, having gone the wrong way to spectate). I started to hear some crazy person yelling into a bullhorn and when I got close enough I saw that, yes, it was indeed the Redhead, on the sidewalk at mile 12.  Oh, happy day!

I think this is my new favorite race picture ever

I didn't know it, but this would be my last race for a long time.

Interestingly, this injury (the tendon rupture and accompanying gastroc tear) is colloquially known as "tennis leg" because it happens most often to tennis players. Why it happened to me I have no idea.

I'm holding out hope I will be able to run when I go on vacation to Cape Cod in six weeks. That's all I want: to run by the ocean.