16,404

I took part in the Baltimore Women's Classic 5K. I have been training for months, building up from walking, to some running and mostly walking, to mostly running and some walking, to all running. It's all in preparation for the half-marathon I'm planning to run in October. The race took place at 8am in the morning and much like the days leading up to it, it was hot and muggy. Despite this, I felt confident.

There was one thing that made me nervous. Over the past month or so, I have noticed an increasing ache in my left ankle. I thought it was either a normal pain associated with beginning runners or that my precariously tiny ankles weren't up to the force of the impact. Either way, I felt that soldiering through was the way to go and I kept going at a harder and harder pace. I didn't worry that I couldn't finish the race, but I did worry that my ankle might not so I decided to take it a little easy last week, trying to give my ankle some time to recover and become strong again.

When the race day dawned, I was feeling rested and my ankle was in as good of shape as it has been in a while.

For the first mile, I felt pretty good.

It was somewhere around the halfway point that it started to ache. And then hurt. And then it was lightening bolts of pain. So I slowed to a walk, not that I was breaking any speed records anyway, and hobbled along.

But I hadn't sweated and suffered and pushed myself for the last three months to walk across the finish line, so after a half mile, I picked up the pace and I ran the last mile and change. I was huffing and puffing and my ankle was killing me, but I finished it. And I finished it running.

I finally broke down and went to the doctor today and he thinks it might be a stress fracture. That'll teach me.