Back in shoes!!!

Since my last checkup I’ve been back in my own shoes and making a lot of progress towards normal life. The skin on my feet is now completely closed up leaving me without bandages. Instead I’ve got a tight sock with holes on both ends that I get to wear underneath my regular socks. The idea behind it is to protect the new skin a little bit and help keep scar tissue from getting too out of control on the top of my foot. It’s not the fancy colored compression socks I was initially promised, but I have another appointment next month where I’m hoping that I can hook that custom job up.

More importantly, I’m running again. Slowly, sometimes painfully. But running it is. I started with some light jogging on the grass over at the fairgrounds which was really hard. Then, did more of that but added in some strides with Lori and Kris. Another day I tried to go for a bike ride on the trails rather than run with Lori, Kris, and Eric. But it was super muddy so I ended up walking, pushing my bike, and for the last few miles carrying it which left me with 3 hours of pretty hard work. I should’ve just run. Anyway, I quickly graduated to High School Butte over in Jackson. Then there was an hour run on the roads in Driggs with Jay followed by two laps up High School Butte the next morning. Friday morning, Lori and I climbed up Snow King. All of this is to say that life gets better every day.

I’m glad to be feeling more comfortable on my feet these days as I’m adding a new job to my life and cutting back my hours a bit at VARD. In a couple weeks I’ll officially be the new deputy county attorney for Teton County, ID. Which means that I’ll be doing all of the criminal prosecution on behalf of the county. All of my efforts to avoid lawyering have now officially gone down the tubes. I am pretty excited about the change of pace for a few days each week though.

I don’t have any sense yet of when I’ll be back to racing, but I’m getting pretty excited to be able to do some consistent running here. We just got back from a weekend in Pocatello previewing the course for a 50-miler on May 23rd. I got in a solid run in the mud and rain on Saturday then went for a hike on Sunday. We stayed with our friends Pat and Dan Spurlock – a couple of the nicest and most amazing people on earth. It was just a great weekend of enjoying some dirt trails and rain (as opposed to the snow this morning in the Tetons . . .) and spending time with good people. I’ll likely be taking a couple days off here as we just started doing a cleanse last night which involves limited calories and therefore limited energy to be used for running.

Most importantly, Matt Hooley won the Eugene Marathon in 2:18:38 on Sunday!!! That makes for an trials qualifier and a helluvah time to boot, way to go Hools!