Hiatus

My appointment with the podiatrist did not go as I had hoped. She looked at my toe and suspected a bone spur growing on the top of the toe, which was confirmed with an X-Ray. The rest of the appointment was sort of hazy, because after the I heard the words surgery, and 6 weeks of recovery, I tried to fight back tears of disbelief and dissapointment. This spur has been there at least a year, and was the cause of my original problem last November. It was growing and pushing under the toenail. This caused the deformation of the nail, which in turn became ingrown and infected. After the toenail was removed, the spur kept growing and now is pushing on the rest of the nail, causing my discomfort. We talked about the option of waiting until after White Rock, but it is likely that I'm going to keep having pain and discomfort and won't be able to run anyway. And I know a Marathon is tough enough to run under perfect health and optimal conditions, why make it tougher if every mile is painful if I can fix the issue and try again later ? It's also possible that I could get another infection either under the toenail or worse, in the bone where the spur started. Apparently this is just a genetic fluke from a leftover growth plate, and not an injury related to the miles I've put on my feet running. So, two weeks from Friday, I go in for outpatient surgery to have the spur removed. Then it's two weeks in some type of orthopedic shoe, then I can graduate to a running shoe. Four weeks after that I can start back to running slowly, and hope I can start making my way back to where I left off. After I listened to the information, I made the necessary follow up appointments, and left. I managed not to completely start bawling until I sat down in the car, and then I sat and had a good long cry. I put in so much time, dedication and effort towards the Marathon goal, that not to be able to reach it in December is hard for me to comprehend. Now, I know I wasn't going for Olympic Gold, or even trying to win a in my age group, but regardless of my goal this sense of loss, of dissapointment is very painful and real. I actually can't think of a time I have ever felt so deeply dissapointed. I've never set a goal that I didn't reach, never tried for something that I knew I couldn't accomplish. I always have only worked towards what I knew I could achieve, and never realy tried to reach beyond that. And this goal was, for me, that one goal that I never thought possible to attain until this year. I never had the faith in myself that I could do it. Or the faith in God that he could give me the strength. Until now. And since I plan to continue running for a lifetime, I have a lifetime of races to run. (As two very important people in my life reminded me when I told them about the surgery). So in the big picture, six weeks out of running isn't too big of a deal. Compared to all of the other many important things in life this is just a small blip on the radar. It's just a little hiatus.