Pain? What pain?

Sometime late last week I developed a pain in the top of my left foot. It was around the time I did my run in Baltimore. For that run I had to tie the key to my car onto my shoe and, since I was a little paranoid about losing my key, I tied my shoe extra tight. When the pain first showed up it felt like bruise and I assumed I had simply bruised it by tying my shoe too tight. Over the next day or so it seemed to get better. Then, during a subsequent run, the pain came back a bit. I assumed I had gotten too enthsiastic with the shoe tying thing again but then I did some poking around on the internet. It appears that I may have a metatarsal stress fracture. This is not a good thing. It's not horrible in that it doesn't require surgery or anything along those lines, however it would mean taking many weeks off from running and that would be the end of my training. So, what to do? For now I'm going to keep running but I'm going to take it easy and I'm definitely going to be tying my shoes loosely for awhile. We'll see how that goes. I don't have a long or hard run until Saturday when I'm scheduled to run 10 miles. I'm hoping that my foot will be feeling much better by then. If the pain persists then I'll make an appointment to see a podiatrist and get an expert opinion. Perhaps I'm in denial about this but I'm still hopeful that this is just a bruise. I'd much rather be an idiot that doesn't know how to tie her shoes than be an injured runner.