The Portland Marathon is 2.5 days away as I hobble towards the starting line.

Typically marathon training and preparation is filled with aches, pains, and minor injuries from over exertion. Me? I keep injuring myself while puttering around the house.

Six weeks ago I broke my little toe while getting a cup of coffee. The prescribed treatment for such an injury is to basically ignore it if you can. You tape up the little bastard and don't do anything that hurts too much. I'm not a real detail-oriented guy when it comes to my health care, but I can follow that kind of recovery regimen. The toe hurt a lot for the first week, but it's been pain-free for the last couple weeks.

Recently my Achilles tendon has been kind of tender, so I've been icing it after my runs. On Monday I did just that. I grabbed my ice pack gel thingee from the freezer and stuck it in my sock. As always, it was painfully cold, but I gritted my teeth and endured. I'm manly that way.

Turns out, ha ha, that apparently gel packs are supposed to be squishy and if they're frozen solid, which mine was, then they're too cold to apply to your skin. Apparently, ha ha, I gave myself a nice little case of frostbite or at least something called frostnip. So, now the skin on the back of my ankle is all crackley and tender. It hurts when I do things like crazy things like walk or wear zany articles of clothing like socks or shoes.

On the plus side, maybe the pain will help me forget about all the rain predicted for Portland this Saturday.