Well, it seems like after my nine days off from being sick, I am going to have to slow down and do some easy runs for another week. After Friday's run, I've been having some pretty nasty top-of-foot pain and, by my wife's diagnosis, it is most likely Extensor Tendonitis.

I've done a lot of reading about making the switch to minimalist running and one of the more common injuries is tendonitis. Honestly it is rough enough that it has been making it hard to walk down the stairs to take the dog out. Though it isn't supposed to be very serious, I do need to respect it. I'm not a huge fan of resting, but I guess I need to listen to my own advice that I've written many times. It is time to proceed slowly and carefully, increasing my mileage more slowly. I need to work on the fundamentals of my form.

I am kind of bummed because I had a grand vision of training for a half-marathon over the next eight weeks, but this being my first week into the program and missing two of the four goals I set, I think a dose of reality needs to be swallowed. I am going to ratchet back and focus on building up to a consistent 10k, and I'm going to work on improving my strength and speed. Really what that means is instead of doing 6, 7, 8 mile runs, I'll be doing 3, 4, and 5 miles or less.

The hardest part for me is to avoid overdoing it. I have been pretty gung-ho about this whole project and have gotten a lot of great support, but that just means I need to be even more careful to avoid serious injury. I am itching to go, but I'd rather take it slower and be able to run for many years to come rather than getting injured every few months and not being able to run at all.

I guess I just wanted to reiterate my earlier posts and just remind new runners to take it slow, and respect any pain that you do have. Slow and steady wins the injury race.