"60 Minutes" and "Feet don't fail me now!"

Today I am an hour closer to home. Last night at midnight, B-town started “daylight savings time” by setting the clocks back 60 minutes. This means that today I got an extra hour to sleep in, although I didn't do that. Also, I’ll no longer stroll over to the gym in the dark when I do my morning FOB workout, although it does mean that I’ll come home in the dark from now until spring (even if my some miracle I get off of work before 9:00pm). The odd thing about this “falling back” of the clock is that the time change was official for all of Iraq at 11:59pm on Saturday, yet we were told not to change our clocks until last night. Little did I know that the coalition forces had authority to make that change. Makes you wonder that if we have the ability to alter time, why can’t we fix this place so we all can go home?

I’ve been struck down with a new injury that is weighing on me, or more accurately, the weight I’ve been carrying has caused me a new injury. I started getting some pain in my feet prior to coming to Iraq when I was doing train-up at Riley. I sucked it up and dealt with it because it wasn’t that painful and if I didn’t run for a day or two, it usually got better. It appears that I now need more than a day or two to fix it. Plantar Fasciitis (inflammation of the tissue that connects the heal bone to the toes) is the name of this new ailment and it sucks. Of course that’s just a guess as to what's wrong with me since I’m no doctor (and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night either). I pride myself in being a pretty fit person with only a handful of notable injuries. With the exception of a bum knee, reconstructed shoulder, torn ligaments in an ankle and a broken arm, life hasn’t thrown much at me in terms of bumps and bruises that I haven’t bounced back from. This new twinge in the feet started out as something I could deal with by limiting the frequency of my runs, but it has quickly turned into an injury that needs addressing since it takes more than a day or two to feel like I can run again. I spent the better part of this morning (thanks to the lovely gift from the CF of an extra hour to do with as I please) researching my symptoms online to see what I can do about fixing my howling doggies. I’ve ordered about $75 worth of arch supporting insoles for all of my boots and shoes, done a bunch of calf and Achilles stretches and am now trying to find out how I can get some golf or tennis balls to roll under my feet to increase the blood flow. The ice therapy could be the most challenging, but we’ll see how the other remedies work before I order a freezer online and get it shipped to Baghdad. I’m not too worried about it as I know that I can’t be stubborn if I want to get better. It’s just that I enjoy running to release the stress of the day and with the weather getting milder I’ll miss many a cool morning putting miles under me and my troubles behind me. I know I need to take care of myself in order to help with the healing process but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, so forgive me if I brood for a little bit until I can get my mind past it. I’ll have to rid my vest of the extra ammo on it (and go back to just a basic load) and take all the junk out of my assault pack that I fail to use on a daily basis (why am I carrying a machette?). I’ll try to spend a few hours each day stretching the key muscles groups and stretching my toes (the latter I’ll do at my trailer as I don’t think the officers in my office would appreciate me choking them out with my stanky feet at work). I don’t know how long it’s going to take to heal this as I’ve read scenarios that ranged from a few months to years before it improved enough to do regular physical activity. My friend Kristine had the same type of issue when she deployed here a year ago and she’s still suffering through the pain to this day. I hope that it won’t be the same for me because I’m not sure what I’ll do as a sedentary person. In fact, my friends and family will probably agree that I’m quite possibly the worst sedentary person on the planet. Thank goodness they’re not here to see me slowly go insane.