Getting over the mental anguish of the stress fracture - another week in the books

Well, I survived another week of decent running and a decent amount of numbness in my right tibia from those nasty stress fractures.  Once thing that I keep reminding myself is that my bone is completely healed and that I am doing the right thing by running a little on it.  This was the advice many people have given me over the summer; that there'll be some "weird" pain where the stress fracture use to be.  And like I've said before, that weird pain was also a thick and fat feeling that I didn't like having.  It was just a reminder that; "hey, I'm going to bug you and hopefully break you mentally before I actually break physically.".  That was not fun, but I still kept at it, and hopefully I'm right.

So, after some light trotting around during the week, a fun trip to Jemez Springs (elevation: 7900'), and 2 little mountain excursions; I would say I had a decent week of running, and I use the word running loosely.  I can honestly say that running up the Pino trail was quite difficult for me.  With the company of Chris and Tony, I made it up to the Crest Trail from the Spain Parking Lot in one hour and fifteen minutes, then blazed down for a total time of two hours and ten minutes.  I've never been up to the crest from that trail, and it was quite amazing and wet.  I would highly recommend that trail and hopefully in the future we will venture over to South Peak and back.  As you can tell, I really have the trail running bug and have my sights on Mt. Taylor 50k at the end of September.  After that, I will head back to the roads and attempt to qualify for the 2016 Olympic Trials in the marathon, but before that I still want to get scuffed up in the mountains.

Here are some pictures from today's run up Embudito Trail.