more surgery?

After OPSF a few weeks ago, I realized I had to do something about the cyst on the bottom of my foot as I could not place full weight on it without enduring pain. The Podiatrist stuck a needle in it (ouch!), but couldn't get anything out of it. A MRI of the foot confirmed the cyst was a solid, homogeneous mass -- likely a ganglion cyst & that it didn't appear to be malignant. The recommendation was to have it removed.


Ever since then, I've been debating whether to have this surgery, which would likely put me out of action for a minimum of 2-3 weeks (according to the Podiatrist). The thing is, I'm still several months away from recovering from my last stay in the hospital! As an alternative to surgery, I've discovered that if I modified my shoes, I could reduce the pain significantly. Adding another pad & making a hole in both inserts, I can keep most of the pressure off. But, raising the foot just this small amount makes it feel like I'm wearing elevated shoes and makes my toes prone to blisters on the TOP! Also, a hole in the side of my shoe allows some lateral relief. At a training run at Tecumseh this last Saturday, I added another pair of socks & plenty of lube & was able to finish the run without alot of pain. Biggest problem at the run was not the cyst, but being out of shape -- just been missing too much training time.


minimalistic footwear for around the house:


So, right now, with the shoe modification, the Tecumseh Marathon is a go & surgery is on hold. Based on the very slow training run, it looks like I won't be able to improve on my disappointing time of last year (when I was still recovering from the swine flu). Based on the pace I was able to keep on the training run, I'm going to have to downgrade my goal this year to 6 hours instead of 5.

Tecumseh training run crew, courtesy of Terry Fletcher: