After riding about 85 miles last weekend, my last training ride before the AIDS/LifeCycle, my left foot felt a little sore. Nothing unusual there. After nine hours in cycling shoes that are pretty comfortable, but don't flex and are terrible to walk in, my feet always feel a little weird and wobbly once I'm out of them again.

My foot still felt a little sore the next day, and it didn't help I spent half the day walking in Golden Gate Park at the Bay to Breakers run, or well more of a walk... or more of just one giant moving party, but they really hurt the next day. I gave it a couple days then called me doctor. On friday morning, after just a couple minutes looking at it and seeing which ways of bending it caused me a lot of pain, he told me he was worried it might be fractured. Fractured!?

Nnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I told him he was freaking me out, I'm supposed to be riding a bike to LA in a week. It just can't be fractured. "I know," he said, "that's why I'm going to send you down for an x-ray and I'm going to find you a podiatrist who can see you today."

The x-ray's had been faxed over before I arrived and podiatrist told me straight away it wasn't fractured. Examining my feet he said they were "incredibly flat" and was surprised I'd never seen a podiatrist as a kid (I'll have to ask my folks about that) and pronounced I had acute tendentious, but that I could ride next week if I take care of it.

I was so incredibly relieved to hear that after my morning had started out with a possible fracture. While I was there he took castings of my foot for orthopedic inserts, but they won't be ready for the ride and I'll probably be in some pain during the ride.

I'll live with the pain, I'm kind of surprised with myself for being so willing to accept it's going to be painful, but riding this is important to me. I've raised a lot of money so far for the fight against AIDS and a little extra pain to help so many people is something I'm happy to take on.

(By the way, it's not to late to make a donation of support! And I promise, after the ride I'll start writing about other subjects too)