A fellow sufferer of Accessory Navicular Syndrome.

Today I met with a professor at school to discuss my upcoming oral qualifying exam and he immediately noticed my Vibrams (since I pretty much wear them everywhere). He asked me about them, and I gave him a cliffsnotes version of what the point of them is. As soon as I mentioned that I had an accessory navicular, he told me that he did also! We chatted about how I injured mine and how he discovered his. His pain was solved with orthotics and he is very happy with them. I'm still hopeful that the foot experiment will be a success... he did say that he knows that everyone is different and that even though we have the same thing wrong with our foot, what works for one person won't necessarily work for another person. But it was cool to actually meet someone who has the same issue I do.

I walked from school to the subway again today while listening to Chopin. It was a pretty glorious experience. I really wanted to run this morning, but J had a really hard time sleeping last night so he didn't wake up early enough for us to go. I am not really ready to be running myself yet. I don't know what I'm afraid of. The park is perfectly safe and the trails aren't that crazy, but I just prefer to go with my fiancé. It's more fun to have someone to talk to and someone to be with. So hopefully we will get to go tomorrow. Walking almost two miles today felt really good. I think my feet just might actually be getting stronger.

I also had an argument with one of my youngest brother's friends yesterday about the shoes. He's a track runner and a world class know it all and told me and J definitively how bad the Vibrams are for us and how the three kids on the track team who wear them are all too injured to run now despite the fact that they don't actually run in the Vibrams because they "know better". It's impossible to have a real conversation with the kid because he listens with his mouth, so I quickly gave up in trying to explain the biomechanics behind it. Even my father doesn't believe in it, despite being an engineer like me, but that's okay. When I run in the shoes, I know what I'm doing is right.

And speaking of which, I take back everything I said up there about not wanting to go alone. I'm going for a run! I'll bring my watch and my pedometer of questionable accuracy.