of Being Open

Before stepping foot off my bed every morning I do this series of stretches.  It takes about 5 minutes which doesn't seem long but it is when you're ready to just get out of bed and take care of the morning's business.

The stretches involve calf, hip, and leg stretches mostly to get ready for the ankle, feet and toe stretches.  If I don't perform this ritual I will not be able to walk on the bottoms of my feet and I don't know how to walk on the tops of my feet.

Plantar Faciitis....dreaded, dreaded plantar faciitis (as opposed to plantar fascism with is another dread altogether about which auto correct seems to feel passionate)

Because the dread has caused some pretty strained calves after running I had to take a rest from running for a week and ease back in.  At the track this morning I was barely doing a jog to take it slow and then picked it up in the second mile.  Just as I was thinking I was feeling pretty good a tall, lean, running goddess slowed enough to remove her ear piece and inform me that running on my toes is going to get me injured; particularly with plantar faciitis.  She told me to run heel-toe.

I had a couple response choices:  be offended because I already know everything and ignore her, be embarrassed and look around to see if anyone else was around to witness my humiliation, or thank her and adjust my footfall to see what happens.

I chose option 3.  Turns out it slowed me down tremendously.  Turns out I could feel muscles being challenged.  Turns out my calves felt nothing...meaning no ache.  I kept with it.

While I was toe-heeling the last mile I was thinking about how much I was glad to have another runner take a break from their solace to help me.  I was thinking how God placed someone in my day to help.  About a month ago when I was stalled with my calf-attack I prayed "Please God, don't take running away from me..."
I wanted to talk to her about running.

So when I turned the last 1/4 mile marker she happened to be parked right there and I said "thank you."  Jackie walked over and asked me if I stretched after running and then we sat down in the grass and stretched and talked running for another half hour.

I'm glad I didn't choose to be offended or embarrassed.  I'm glad I didn't pretend we didn't have an exchange.  I'm really glad to have made a new friend : )