Week Fourteen

If being stressed counted as exercise, I'm so ready to run a marathon, like, tomorrow!

But since it doesn't, I must admit to being alarmingly behind in both my training and my fundraising.


I no longer need physical therapy, but my ankles are still giving me a good bit of trouble. I'm not sure what to do about it - I have an elastic brace that is extremely uncomfortable and I can't see that it helps much if at all. I have a larger/bulky brace that has solid supports in it and keeps my ankle from wobbling nicely, but I can't fit both the brace and my orthopedics in my running shoes, and the brace has some elastic that sits under the arch of my foot and pulls on the arch when I run, throwing off my stride *roll eyes* I go on long walks without the brace, and the ankle feels weak and sore but I haven't rolled or otherwise hurt it. I believe going without the brace whenever safely possible will help strengthen the muscle/tendons/etc. but I'm still nervous about running on it without a brace. I think I need to learn how to tape it properly, and see if I can find real sports brace, I'm thinking the lace up kind, that doesn't pull on the arch (like the one pictured in my previous post).


Otherwise been a good week. Spending a good bit of time on the stationary bike at home, finally have things sorted out so I have access to the gym after hours, and I discovered a very pleasant new jogging route close to my neighborhood (except I'm forced to run on the roads because there are so many pine cones on the sidewalks *boo, hiss!* Grenade shaped land mines!)

Catching Up...

I think my current life is tainted with retribution for having been exceptionally graceful in a previous life... So I had a pulled muscle, and this was bad because it was the same muscle I pulled less than a year earlier. My Dr. and Physical Therapist agreed that I could and should continue running, just tone it back to about 3-4 miles; my first day back on the roads I promptly twisted my ankle. It wasn't too bad and 2-3 days later I was doing something around the house without my brace on and was reaching for something up on tip-toe, and rolled it. Little over a week later I'd been wearing my brace diligently, and been working out at the gym without mishap and was thought it was safe to wear cute shoes and go without my brace for a day because I was visiting relatives and not doing anything strenuous that would put my ankle in danger. Until much later that evening, I was leaving Barnes & Noble, and it had been raining out all afternoon/evening and the parking lot had several small lakes and I couldn't get to my car without going through one of them. My feet slid around in my now squelching wet shoes, and I rolled my ankle again. *exasperated sigh*

At this rate, because my training time and distances have been so limited due to injury, I'm beginning to wonder if I will be able to finish the marathon, or have to back down to the half. I'm stubborn enough I'd run on it anyway - and be the last one to come crawling across the finish line 7-8 hours later - but if I do that, the odds are VERY good I'll do semi-permanent damage... not sure what to do, and the cold weather doesn't help my disposition much (it may not be 30 degrees below with snow drifts and ice everywhere, but it's certainly cold enough to be unpleasant running outdoors).

On the up side it has be a very pleasant Holiday season for me. Despite being a little on the shy side I've made enough friends and family of friends have adopted me so that I'm not terribly lonely or homesick this fist Christmas away from my family or origin. I shall miss my family and friends back in MN very much, especially Kelli's annual Caroling Party, but I'll be back for a visit soon!!

Week Nine

Taking some of my own advice for a change, have been taking it easy and am feeling much better. Did NOT go running with the team all last week, but did go for short easy walks around the neighborhood, went swimming on Wednesday, and spent a couple hours wandering the hiking trails up on nearby Monte Sano.
Monte Sano was So Beautiful! I never stopped to think before, that when feathered things go south for the winter, that Alabama IS SOUTH! There must have been a million songbirds up there, not to mention the spectacular fall colors. Oh yeah, and I took my boyfriend hiking with me and while we were up there he proposed... ;) And I said "Yes!" of course. *Big Silly Grin!* However, I could barely sleep at all last night and kept waking up to stare at my left hand to make sure I wasn't just dreaming it all, which I'm told is to be expected, but that also makes getting up in the morning to go running very very difficult.

Week Eight

Grrr!
I hate admiting I'm hurt, and I managed to hurt myself worse by not admiting it and pushing myself instead of resting. *Roll Eyes*
So, last Saturday I pulled my left Quad. I ran on it Tuesday, and it hurt all day Wednesday, so like a less-than-briliant person I ran on it Thursday, and it REALLY hurt all day Friday, so instead of running with the group I went for an easy, short walk on Saturday, and will do the same instad of running tonight/Tuesday.
What has me concerned is that it still hurts as bad as it does, because I know a lot of tricks to help sports injuries feel better and heal sooner (minus the part where it takes me forever to aknowlege the injury in the first place), including various massage and stretching techniques, combinations of OTC drugs and rubs and creams, taping bandaging and bracing, and I even have access to a small personal ultrasound unit. Any/all of which has helped to varying degrees, but I'm not back to running yet... *sigh* There's no way around the simplest healing method in the book - stay the heck off it and just give it time!

Week Seven

Election Day!
Super excited for the MUCH larger than average voter turnout at my polling place, but I guess they weren't prepared for such a crowd because it took a little over TWO HOURS of standing in line to get in and cast a ballot!
After I got over being cranky about standing there, I became quite grateful that I've started running - I may have been uncomfortable, but my legs are in very good shape and I have no injuries or joint problems that would make standing around for hours genuinely painful, unlike some unlucky people I saw in line with me.

Only three people, including myself, showed up to run on Thursday, and the other two were a good bit older than me and wanted to walk instead. But one of them brought her dog - really still just a big puppy, positively bounding with energy - and I ran sprints with the dog up and down the route, keeping pace with the walkers. Was actually a fun variation in my workout!

Then Saturday we had a big turnout for our group run, great to see everybody! We did the ~6mi. Cotton Row loop, and then extended it for a total ~8mi. run. However, I should have listened to my body and stopped after 6 miles to massage out some tightness going on in my thigh, because after that last little 2 miles I had managed to properly Pulled my left Quad. - OUCH! Feels better today and I'm going to run on it this week, but it took several days of working the muscle with all my massage tricks to un-do the mess I made of it.

Week Six

First (and with any luck, Only) illness of the training season. Just a head cold, nothing serious, and it's clearing up, slowly but surely. It's a reminder of how training with this team is so different from training competitively. I'm not being yelled at to ignore the pain and train harder, to suck it up and keep going, instead I'm encouraged to take care of my body. This isn't like Basic Training where they tear you down and built you back up the way they want you, this is about working with your body and respecting your limits - two completely different schools of thought and it's taking some getting used to!

Ross has started running with me.

He needs it to build up his cardio/endurance to pass his next PT test. I consider myself pretty good in that department; I'm more interested in the mileage and working on technique.

As I hoped, he's a really good running partner, keeps the same pace, and - I think from his military training - he automatically matches my step/rhythm; it's kinda funny.
I missed Tuesday because of a meeting for the up-coming More To Life weekend, and Ross came with on Thursday and Saturday.

Saturday's run was good because it cleared my sinuses a little bit, and it forced me to listen to my body and only push myself a little bit instead of pushing too hard like I'm used to doing.
Things my body was telling me:
My ankle still hurt from last weekend a little bit, and I rolled it again going over some rocks. I could have run on it, it didn't hurt too bad, but it was much better to walk instead and get the miles in without doing more damage.
And, of course, I was sick. I could mostly breath, but stopped at the 6 mile point instead of pushing on to the 8 mile point where the majority of the team was going.

Also got a lot of work done outside this weekend. Weeding and dead-heading in the front flowerbed, re-stacked a pallet of bricks, and moved a heap of sand away from the end of the driveway. There were three lizards and two snakes living in the brick pile that I had to evict. I'm not terribly fond of snakes, but they were really little and I wasn't surprised to find them, they were actually sort of cute.

My company is providing a flu shot today. Don't want to go get it. I'm not at high risk of catching the flu in the first place, and my body REALLY doesn't like getting stuck with needles - the odds are about 80% that I'll pass out, even though it's tiny needle and over in about 2 seconds *shrug* I don't understand it, and it's not a conscious fear, but 4/5 times I still end up on the floor.

Week Five

Tired. Just plain TiReD.

Been a full week! There's always so much to do and never enough time to get it all done,
and stuff going on with my parents has been distracting...

As far as running, didn't get out Tuesday, the team was mostly at the Wine Tasting fundraiser, but I didn't go and didn't want to go running by myself. Thursday was ok; I don't really like running in the rain because it's always so humid, but it wasn't a cold rain which was good. As it's getting colder out I need to find more motivation to get out and go running. It's REALLY hard to convince myself to crawl out from warm blankets to go running in the cold evening air.

The 5K on Saturday was a huge turn-out for the breast cancer walk/run! I didn't have the best race but did ok. Several of my teammates ran it also and did Great! And I convinced my boyfriend to run it with me and i think he'll start running with me more often, which will be awesome. I really don't have the motivation to run by myself.



*sigh* But a cup of hot tea will make everything well and good with the world...

Week Four

Tuesday evening run was good; Thursday I ran with Jamie and she and I took a longer route and she let me push myself at much faster pace than usual. I was still able to keep up a breathy conversation, so I didn't push the pace too hard, but it was difficult to rein myself back. The pace will be great for my next 5K this weekend, but I couldn't hold something like that for long during a marathon. I really need to run with a watch and teach my muscles to hold a slower pace.

Saturdays are notoriously full for me, and while I manage to to wedge in an hour or so of running somewhere in my day, it's rarely with the team in the morning. This weekend was the first one I've made it to with the team, and it was also the longest I've run - we did most of the Cotton Row route on the NE end of town, approx. 6.2 miles with lots of hills, which is great practice for Birmingham. That's going to be my biggest learning curve, elevation change. Having grown up in the North Dakota/ Minnesota Red River Valley where it is F-L-A-T, and now I have to deal with inclines and hills and the occasional small mountain.

Went to Fleet Feet yesterday. They did a great job, as always. Tried several shoes, and a pair of inserts, and inevitably ended up liking the Most Expensive Pair in the heap *roll eyes* I always have had expensive taste, even when I don't know it. At least I don't have a shoe fetish, or I'd be in deep financial trouble! If I put as many miles on these shoes as I anticipate, I'll probably need a new pair sometime in January, which will be just long enough to break in a new pair before the race mid-February. I might could make them last until February... just not sure yet how hard I'm going to be on them.

Week Three

CrAzInEsS !!!!!

I ran in my first event this weekend!

Went to Nashville with my boyfriend, and his aunts invited me to go running with them. It wasn't until we were on our way downtown that I realized we weren't "just running," we were signed up to run a Breast Cancer 5K! Now, the fact it was a 5K didn't scare me, we've run further than that in practice, but I've never been to a running event before, much less been in one, so there was a lot to learn very quickly.

Getting signed in and getting my number and figuring out where it belonged and how to pin it to my shirt so I didn't nearly rip it off every time I moved wasn't too difficult - I just had to look around at the several hundred other runners around me.

Pre-race fitters weren't anything new, I've dealt with all that before with swimming, but I was amazed how much energy a big crowd at the starting line can suck OUT of you! But there were at least as many people cheering along the sidewalks after the first mass-lunge forward and we got thinned out a bit, that helped put some of the excitement energy back IN.

But I'm still getting the hang of running hills, and the very first leg was a very steep hill, and there were several smaller ones along the route, and there were no markers telling you how far you'd gone, all of which threw me off a good bit.

Even though it was a short course, there were two water stops. At the first one I got way more water ON me than IN me. At the second one I slowed down enough to grab a cup and gulp most of it down, but it was difficult to get around people and not slip/trip over all the crushed cups on the wet ground.
During the race my mind-talk was moving MUCH faster than I was. I was thinking about technique and trying to remember every iota my first roommate (on a full-ride track scholarship) had every said about running. And I didn't have my iPod with me, so my old swimming manta just kept going around and around in my head, "Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..." (from Finding Nemo). Also, I was telling myself that I've gone absolutely crazy, there's no way I'm going to finish this without hurting myself, if this is only 3 miles what makes me think I could ever run a 13 mile half marathon much less fantasize about a full marathon... had to get all that negative crap handled. And at the end (finishing with a respectable :32.54) I was on an adrenaline high and couldn't wait to tell my coach I'd changed my mind and wanted to run the full marathon in February! *roll eyes* Isn't it amazing how quickly one changes their mind once they realize they didn't die!?!

'Nother 5K coming up in a week and a half. Should be fun!

Week Two

Feels like it's been a busy week, but it really hasn't; just lots going on around me.

Running in the evening last week was GREAT.

The weather has been Beautiful and it feels so good to get out after being cooped up in the office all day.

Haven't been as sore as I figured I would be.
I was honestly hurting worse after swimming with Rebecca last Wednesday than after running ~3 miles with the team on Thursday; but I'm pretty sure that's because I was trying to teach her how to do butterfly, which I not very good at myself :)
Only thing that's really starting to worry me is how much gas it's taking to get across town and back to run with the team. I might have to come up with a route closer to home and only run with the team once a week. I REALLY don't want to do that, but I can only wring so many dollars out of the budget for gas...

Something I find very odd compared to things at home: Huntsville is much larger (population and square miles) than where I used to live, but there's a definite lack of public transportation. I couldn't 'just take the bus' even if I wanted to. Bike lanes are still a pretty new thing and very few roads have them, much less decent side walks - which doesn't make much difference anyway because the city is so spread out. There's just no way to get from point A to point B without driving. *shrug* Such is life; we just have to deal with it.

Week One

I love swimming, and have always been pretty active - swam for my high school and college teams. So, when graduation started to sneak up on me, I invented this fuzzy plan that I'd train for a triathlon or something...
Several months after my last swim meet I had graduated, Cum Laude, Had scored my first 'real' job, supporting NASA (how cool is that for a first job!), and comfortably settled into life as an independent adult. But something was missing...

Then one day a friend told me she was training for a triathlon with a local chapter of 'Team In Training'. I checked them out http://www.teamintraining.org/tnt2008/1/ and realized this is exactly what was missing! I needed to get active again and more importantly, start hanging out with a team again - with the benefit of supporting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So I signed up to run the Mercedes Half Marathon this coming February - a) because there aren't any triathlons until spring, b) because I've never run a long distance event before in my life and wanted to start small and work up to a Full Marathon sometime later.

The first week is supposed to be the easiest, but has in fact proven to be the most difficult...

Finding the meeting place for the first team practice was an adventure (in the Chinese sense!) because I don't know downtown very well and managed to get Lost Lost Lost!

While I'm not in terrible shape, I've always been a swimmer, which means my muscles are NOT developed for running! Just walking in the mornings is making me sore, and I've no doubt that's going to get worse before it gets better as my muscles and joints slowly adjust to the idea of impact sports.

But the inspiration is still with me and I'm very excited to keep running! (or limping/jogging as the case may be for a week or so yet).