What's wrong with this picture?

Sunday morning, 8am, the alarm goes off. Joe and I get out of bed in a rather chipper mood and head to our workout clothes. I had made plans to meet others for a track workout. Why on a Sunday morning? Why not! Rather than get in out car as we normally would have, we took a detour to the shed. Out came the bikes. We were planning on riding to the track. We had planned this for the last several days and finally all road blocks had been removed. My old bike was tuned up, his bike now had air in the tires and I had a brand spanking new helmet. Off we went. Now here's the problem, we live at the bottom of a rather large hill. 20 seconds into the ride and half way up the hill I was huffing and puffing like I do at the end of a track workout. This was seeming like a very bad idea.

During my 2 month injury I had been spending many hours in the pool and on the stationary bike. Feeling down about the whole injury thing and not feeling like I was pushing it hard enough on either the bike or in the pool, I came up with the brilliant idea to register for a triathlon. Now if that wasn't bad enough I convinced my sister (who is just a competitive although she will deny it) to register as well. Now that I'm running again, I'm not nearly as into the triathlon training as I was several weeks ago. But too late, I've already submitted my registration. Hence the reason we rode to the track this morning.

The track itself was not a bad in the beginning as I had anticipated. By the time we crawled under the fence to gain access I had recovered from the bike. Oh yeah, we didn't have keys and had to sneak on. Sorry if anyone reading is from Brown security, it was for a good cause! Sue and I did 5x5 mins at threshold pace, which translates into right around an 8 min mile give or take a few seconds. Now it was my understanding that this type of workout wasn't supposed to feel terrible. My lungs would beg to differ. Needless to say we completed the workout as instructed and did not ditch for morning mimosa's

Biking home felt pretty good, we avoided some of the steep down-hills this time around. I remember as a kid loving to ride downhill at top speed screaming at the top of my lungs with both legs outstretched. Going downhill now is a terrifying experience where I grip my handlebars and brakes with white knuckles and pray that I won't land on the side of the road with a broken shoulder.

Ahhhh....5:30am

I hate to say it, but I've missed 5:30am. There is just something about getting my run in first thing. For the rest of the day I feel like I have a big secret. That said, it's not easy getting up and I'm pretty sullen while preparing for the run and for the first mile or so, ask Joe he will confirm. But after that it's so quiet and nice. We started at the Stadium, met Sue and headed down Elmgrove. It is much easier to get in these morning runs when the temps are in the 50's rather than the 20's (which it was the last time we did this). My legs are still tight and pretty sore but if I want to do a marathon in the fall I have to build up these miles. I try to use the mile rule, if I can't get though a mile it's time to throw in the towel, after that you gotta stick with it. When I thought about walking I my watch read 1.7, too late to stop now. Grin and bear it right! The ridiculous conversation kept me going down the Blvd. You would never know that a Ph.D., MSW, and MBA could be so amused with conversations that many Jr. High Schoolers are probably having on the way to school! We did decide on a detour and headed up to Wayland Sq to follow Elmgrove back to the Blvd. 4.2 miles down and ready for the rest of the day!

The good with the bad

Good things:
1. I completed an awful track workout
2. My times were right on through all 10 400's
3. The foot does not hurt

Bad things:
1. Pain is still there
2. At times pain is unbearable

I'm not sure what's going on here. Went to the track tonight and a 2 lap warm up was killer. Calves and shins cramped up almost immediately. I thought about throwing in the towel and running on the road, but figured that would hurt just as much given how Monday felt. The strange thing is that during the workout I don't feel the pain, that could be due to the fact my body is convinced I am steps from death and focused on keeping my legs inflated. Tomorrow I'll hit the pool and see if that helps. The next step will be back to PT for more help. For now I am iced and covered in flexistat (meaning I smell like an 85 year old nursing home resident who loves Ben Gay). I'm choosing to focus on the fact that I completed a hard ass workout. I remember the first year I started these track workouts. We did a very similar workout and I think I got through lap 6. Today I completed all 10 with the times right on! It was a good workout.

I'm back..

Well sort of. I stopped blogging about a month and a half before my foot injury knocked me out of the game. After 2 months of physical therapy and running on a strange treadmill, I've been running outside for about 2 weeks. I know I shouldn't complain. I also know that it's going to be slow going, but I'm getting frustrated. At first, things felt great. My first few runs were perfect, I felt good, had a great pace. I was like everything was back in sync, it was what running should feel like. Alas that did not last. My last 3 runs have been filled with pain and cramping. Nothing like my injury so I think I'm safe in that respect. Some of this I asked for, last week I ran 6 days with 2 days being fast on the track. Stupid I know, but as I said earlier things felt good. I'm now paying for it. Went my longest distance on Sat, 5 miles, and didn't felt good for most of it. So I took Sunday off, rested from everything. Had high hopes about today's run, got out there in within a half mile started to feel it again. I can't help but get pissed at the fact that prior to the injury we were running 45-50 miles a week, average runs being 7-10 miles and now I can't handle 3-5 miles every other day. I'll get back there, I have to if another marathon is in my future and there is NO way I will rest until I have caught up with Joe in the marathon tally. Enough already with the complaining. Here are the good parts about returning to the road:

1. Even with the pain I have been able to keep my pace at over a min faster than my pace pre-injury.
2. I'm out there and able to run with Joe again.
3. It does not feel like the original injury is returning

I started to chat these to myself today as I struggled down the blvd tonight. Here's hoping that my backing off and running every other day I continue to improve.

Lonesome

I can’t tell you the last time I ran alone, seriously. 98% of the time I’m with Joe and for those runs he’s not with me, I’m with friends or my dog. I don’t run alone, which is a little odd. I do many other things alone and typically don’t mind it. Being social is not my thing. Today he was running late and I was determined to get the miles in. So I started without him. First there was the debate, “I’ll just wait”. I got over that and got out of the car. I’m not a stretcher, I know I need to be, I’ve heard the lecture. Today I was stretching, before a run, unheard of. Once I got beyond that and looked around a little off I went. I had no idea what I was doing, what pace to set, who to comment too. In some ways I felt like was running naked. Even though my dog isn’t much conversation, she keeps me going and hears all my comments about other people. Today I was alone, it was shocking. About a mile down Elmgrove I realized I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go and there was no one to discuss it with. There would also be no one to discuss it with if I decided to turn around right now and go back to the car. That would be cheating, and I decided to head on our old loop. For the whole 40 mins, I never got comfortable, couldn’t find that groove, something was missing. I kept my eyes peeled for a running partner, anyone. Surely I would run into someone, it never happened. I was dreading the 2nd loop, I’m not doing this alone again. No worries, my trusty partner was there and ready to go!

excuses, excuses

I know, I know, it’s been over a week. I’m sorry, time got away from me (I am trying to finish school you know). Excuses are easy, especially when it comes to running. Below are a list of my top 10 (in no order):

1. It’s too cold. I’ve also been known to whine about the heat.
2. It’s too wet (rain, snow or ice). If I wake up in the am and can hear the rain, I refuse to get out of bed. Can’t tell you how many times I have laid there praying for that sound.
3. I just ate, will have to wait 2 hours. 2 hours comes and I have forgotten I needed to go running
4. I overslept, there have been times I have hit the snooze button for 2 hours consecutively.
5. I have homework, which never gets done.
6. Let me do the math, I then add and subtract miles until I have rationalized not going for a run.
7. It’s too late, I’m a morning runner. I can push it to 9am, but after that it’s like asking me to lift up a car. I don’t like to run when it’s light enough for other’s to see me, weird I know.
8. I don’t have time. This one cracks me up because I can run out my front door for as long or as short as I want to, time should not be a factor.
9. I’m sore. HELLO, I'm training for a marathon, I'm ALWAYS sore!!
10. My favorite pants aren’t clean. We now do laundry nightly to avoid this one.

There were no excuses tonight. Postponed the run that should have happened this morning. Why? I heard rain on the roof when I woke up this morning!

Insanity

Just getting from the bed to the alarm clock this morning was painful, was I really going to get 18 miles in today? I was nervous, we had run a lot this weekend and the weather report was not looking good at all. When we left the house there was no snow, could it be we dodged the bullet. Nope, the closer we got to Quonset the heavier the snow was.

We were heading there for a 10 mile race, but had a goal of getting in 16-18 miles. We should have gotten in the long run earlier this weekend, but we didn’t. There was debate about when to run. Should we get it all done before the race? Do a little before and a little after? Wait and get it all done after the race. I lost the debate and we were going to get in as much as possible before hand.

We headed out on a 2 mile loop, the weather was worse than expected. The snow and sleet were heavy, that combined with the wind, it was awful. The first loop was really painful, my legs were not happy to be working again. The second loop was a little better. Just as I thought I could convince Joe to call it a morning, a guy from our running club met up with us. Joe had someone new to chat with, meaning I was stuck for at least another 2 miles. It was nice though, the new addition made us push the pace a little and the change in conversation was a nice distraction. I have been whining about running 55 miles this week, the guy were running with had pulled 70+ a few weeks ago. UNBELIEVABLE! I’ll stop complaining.

Before I knew it we were at the start line. I knew we would be slow so I moved towards the back of the pack. It was a small pack, we might come in dead last. This has never happened before. It was a little nerve wracking. A few miles into it, I was as sore as I expected. The weather forced me to run with my eyes close to closed, only a slit to peer through. The pain from the weather on my face forced me to forget about my legs for a while. Surprisingly I pulled ahead of a few people, maybe I wouldn’t be last.

Things were good until about mile 7.5. My body was done. My legs were throbbing from ankle to hip. As slow as I was moving I refused to walk. The people I passed earlier, soon passed me. I looked behind me there was one person back there. My new hero, he would prevent me from taking the title as last one to cross the finish line.

Finally we were on the home stretch, less than a half mile. Joe was cute. We started a tradition last year of holding hands as we crossed the finish line. Normally we are crossing with a crowd of people watching and are feeling stronger than we were today. I didn’t even think about it, until his had found mine. He had thought about it. It didn’t matter that when we crossed they were breaking it down, or that we were close to dead last or that we were dead tired. We were finishing together, and what a week we had just ended, holding hands.