I AM ACCIDENT PRONE. Anna may argue that she’s more accident prone than I am, and I can agree that she trips and falls more than I do, however the results of my trips and falls seem to be way more severe than hers. In true Cindy Lop-her form (and true Tara form too, I suppose), I royally fucked up my left foot at Sweat Performance on Monday night. Granted, the foot has been in bad shape for 2 years running, suffering from plantar fasciitis following a severely sprained ankle, which I rolled in a pothole while running 2 years ago. In the past two years the pain has been sporadic. It will hurt for a week and then go away for a month. This bout of foot pain, however, has been lingering since June and is about as bad as it ever has been. I can only attribute the recent severe flair up to my taking up tennis again this summer. The quick sprints and pivots significantly re-tore my plantar fascia, and it hasn’t been right since. Despite the lingering injury, I decided to sign up for the Sweat Performance challenge anyway and hope for the best. Honestly, I’m so fucking sick of just sitting, that part of me was okay with the possibility of reinjuring it if it meant I could be active in a fun environment for just a little bit. Enter Monday night. With a bungee cord strapped to my waist, I ran 30 feet out and did the running in place drill. Almost instantly I heard a pop and felt pain shooting up my Achilles tendon. Fuck. 

“I’m not doing this one again,” I told our trainer, Kyle, but unfortunately the damage was already done. That night I went home and decided to relax my sore muscles in a nice bath – something I hardly ever do but that Anna and I agreed was a good substitute for comforting night eating. If ever there was a bad decision… Take a fresh injury you should be applying ice to and slap a heating pad on it. That’s what I did. My foot became so swollen in the middle of the night that all the blood vessels on the side of my foot popped (a sight I hadn’t seen since the ankle sprain of 2009), and I could not walk at all the next day. I went into work but lasted only an hour. Between the electrifying pain in my foot, the intermittent crying sessions, and my dozing off at my desk because I took a muscle relaxer, I decided at the ripe old hour of 9am that I needed to take this freak show home. 

My day off led to an afternoon of wicked drug-induced dreams followed by copious amounts of internet research to see if there was anything else I could do so that I could keep on training while I was waiting for the plantar fascia tear to heal. The answer? Taping. I was skeptical at first that tape could actually support a muscle or ligament, but I was willing to give it a try. After much research and suggestions from derby girls all over, I ended up settling on KT Tape, and I watched their instructional video for taping the plantar fascia online.

Today I applied the tape for the first time, and I’ll be trying it out at Sweat Performance tonight. I’ll also be asking our trainers for modifications of certain exercises, so I can avoid the motions that overextend the plantar fascia: jumping, lunging, and doing anything where I’m being pulled backwards while doing it. It’s not the ideal way to be participating in this month-long boot camp, but at least I’m not quitting. I’ll keep pushing forward with the help of my wonderfully supportive partner, Anna, and I’ll work as hard as I can doing the exercises I can. Will update tomorrow on how the tape goes!

-Tara