Man the life of a furloughed federal employee is boring as hell.



All the free entertainment in DC is closed, and no one wants to do anything that costs money.

So I've been trying to amuse myself other ways. My apartment is freakishly clean. I found a bunch of new recipes to try. I've managed the crap out of my fantasy football team. And today I watched a lot of breaking news about the car chase/shooting at the Capitol.

But days are weird when you don't have to get up and go somewhere or you know be responsible for doing anything.

I've been trying to stick with some sort of routine, in the sense that I wake up and force myself to get out of bed at a reasonable time and then try to be semi-productive. And lately, that's meant re-introducing running to my life.



My doctors told me I could start trying to run after I'd had the bone stimulator for 4 weeks and it's been more than that now, so I took my first baby steps last week.

The run wasn't great. I am insanely out of shape and there was definitely still a little bit of pain in my foot. But it didn't feel like broken foot pain.

Still, I backed off for a week. I don't want to push it too hard too fast.

I ran again on Monday. Did a bit more than two miles. The foot was sore in the beginning, but the pain went away eventually. My times were slow and my leg muscles were killing me by the time I was finished.



Then Wednesday, I set out to run again. I took it slow and tried to note when I did or didn't feel pain in my foot. The pain ebbed and flowed. It was never sharp or biting, but just felt sore every once in a while. It's hard to describe. I finished 3.1 miles, again it was slow and painful and I know I have a long, long way back to where I used to be.



I'm still not sure what the soreness in my foot is and I'm not sure if it's something I should keep trying to run through or if it's something I should wait on some more. I think I'm just going to keep playing it by ear. It's been more than three months now and I'm too antsy to sit around and wait for it to magically feel all better.

With my last stress fracture, the pain wasn't immediately gone when I was cleared to start running again. My foot was tight from being in the foot and it eventually got back to normal over time. I'm sort of hoping that's what I'm dealing with here.