First Post: My Twice Broken Ankle Is Excited About The Upcoming Long Runs

My name is Jim, and along with my wife, am training for our first Philly marathon. It looks like we're at week 10 out of 28 in USAFit Philly's marathon training and I'm finding myself very excited to hit these longer runs.
The farthest I've ever run was last year's Philadelphia half marathon, I haven't run that far before or since. I've run 10 miles, maybe 4 or 5 times, that's including the Broad Street Run and last Saturday. But this Saturday we're on track for 12 miles, which will be the second longest run of my life.
I'm really looking forward to our first 14 mile run. That day will be the farthest I've ever ran. My right ankle is looking forward to it too. I first broke it ten years ago when I turned it trying to take two stairs at once. They just cast it and I was good to go. I broke it again just under three years ago when I crushed it spectacularly under a radiator while trying to renovate my house:


It's epic how huge this thing is, maybe 600 pounds. My father wedged my shoe under the thing for comical effect before he took the after picture. And it's still up on the third floor in the same spot that it dropped. It's like a carnival attraction, everyone who sees it tries to pick it up. No one budges it.

Anyways, the doctor put a pin in my ankle, and I didn't walk on it for six months. And every morning since then, I wake up and walk on an ankle that hurts. It takes a while for the ligaments and all that to loosen up. And in bare feet I always limp, which frankly I think is kinda cool. Cause I can still run. In fact the only time in a day when my ankle doesn't hurt is after I've run a half a mile.

I don't know if I can run a marathon though. The doctors don't either. I can run thirteen miles, but the ankle hurts after. But it would hurt if I sat in front of the TV all saturday morning. I'm thinking we'll find out at between 15 or 17 miles. We had a seminar a few runs ago about footwear. And the woman said "You can't tell if you have the right shoes on at 5 miles, but you'll definitely know at 15." I'm thinking that's how my foot will work. The only way to find out is to run on it right? So bring on 14 miles!

My name is Jim and my wife and I are training for our first marathon. Here's all my training posts to date.