Food Consumed, Problems and a Mystery Solved!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Turkey Day. Like most, my weekend included football (lots of it, and a HUGE win for my Alma mater, Nevada, against the previously undefeated Boise State...Go Pack!), food, and family.

Like last year, the family rented a house in Palm Desert so that we could hang out together. Unlike last year, when we cooked Turkey in our swimsuits, this year was quite a bit cooler. In fact, one night it was almost freezing.

Here are some photos from the weekend!

Food Consumed

DramaGirl and Turbo and their cousins. They started sharing what they were thankful for at the kid's table without even being prompted to do so! How cool is that (everyone? Awwwwwwww....)

A fine plate of food. BTW..that cranberry sauce? I made it. I'd never made cranberry sauce from scratch before. I couldn't believe how easy it was and YUM!

Sis...knowing this photo would inevitably be on the blog, posed with her plate o'food

Problem Solved

When we returned on Saturday, there was some fixing to do. One of the things I'd been meaning to deal with for quite a while was my closet. This was my shoe rack.

Walter commented that my shoe rack was like Jenga...one false move and the whole thing could come crashing down

DramaGirl with a hammer and...

VOILA! A shoe rack that doesn't seem to be falling over!

And that night? Yet another football game!

And Finally..a Mystery Solved
For the last several weeks, I have been complaining about foot pain...again. It's been the strangest thing. Unlike my bout with Plantar Faciitis*, wherein the pain was in my heel, and would increase in intensity as I ran to the point where I would have to stop, or my stress fracture last winter, wherein I couldn't even pretend to start running due to the pain in my upper foot, this current general achiness was localized to the area underneath the ankle bone and next to/inside the Achilles tendon. I couldn't figure it out. I would start feeling some pain when I would start running, but as soon as I'd logged about a 1/2 mile, the pain would subside and by 1 mile, it would disappear entirely until about an hour after I STOPPED running, and then I would feel it again.

I'd also been noticing that my shoes didn't seem to fit as well (HUGE HINT HERE...ONE THAT I UTTERLY FAILED TO PICK UP ON!)

Several of you surmised that that it was tendinitis of some sort and wisely counseled me to take it easy (which I have been doing!)

But it never felt like tendon pain. I could stretch with no problem and, in truth felt pretty flexible. To be honest, it felt more like a bruise.

So tonight, I actually took the time to check out my shoe at the area that was bugging me and I discovered this...

The culprit...I can't draw arrows here, but that little bulge is showing how that area is really about a 1/2 inch thicker** than it is at the heel...in other words, the heel on this shoe is starting to collapse and was rubbing against my foot and after a few miles OUCH!

I'm still not completely sure why, after a mile or so, my foot would stop hurting other than to guess that my foot would sorta work it's way into the shoe, but not so much that it still wasn't putting pressure on my heel.

In any event, I found an old pair of running shoes tonight and ran in those instead and much less pain, and so until I am confronted with other evidence, I'm calling this mystery solved! (Oh yeah...3 miles/10:12 pace)

Well, it's a busy time of year. I'm off to get caught up on some blog reading and commenting. Hope you all had a fabulous Turkey holiday. Our 25 days of Chrismukkah starts on Wednesday...please tell me the semester will be over soon so that I can get caught up on everyone's blogs!
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* If you are new here...the link is to an April post, one of the first times I'd written about PF last year...I'd continue writing about it until well into July...GAH!


** For all of you who are giggling because I used the words "buldge" and "thicker" in the same sentence, be happy that I didn't also use the word "base" (as in base of the heel) to describe where the shoe is deformed. Shame shame...and you know who you are :-))