When I decided not to run what would have been my first marathon in October 2015, I more or less dropped this blog too. Grad school and a promotion at work consumed my life and I focused on those things and recovery. But now I’m back and feel like I have something to write about again!
I’m registered for the Delaware marathon on May 8th. I am very excited for this race and am trying to do everything completely by the book this time as possible. I’m running my miles to the very best of my ability, working with a coach, watching what I eat, and this week even started adding back in strength and cross training. It’s actually feeling like it can happen this time! I’m especially excited for what will be the first race post injury: Rock and Roll New Orleans half marathon. My only goal for this race is to genuinely have a good time and not hurt myself. I think it’s a reasonable goal. 🙂
I had a really interesting epiphany today. And that is that if something hurts, you probably shouldn’t do it. Seems logical enough right? During this injury I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I hurt myself in the first place. And I did do this to myself which makes it all the more frustrating. There was no freak collision with a vehicle, no tripped in pothole, no rabid animal. Just me, overusing my ankle, repetitively slamming through the pain for almost three and a half hours. And so I’ve spent the last 6 weeks reliving that run trying to figure out why it happened and what I can do to prevent it. I know I pushed too hard – but why would I do that?
I was at the gym today doing some lunges with dumbbells. About halfway through the set I felt a really bad pain in my tailbone, almost like my spine was on the brink of shattering. This was definitely not a “just push through and feel the burn” kind of pain. It shouldn’t have been there and I had no business continuing. But I didn’t stop. I checked my form, decided that was fine and I should keep going. The only thought I had was “It’s fine, I’m almost through the set and then it will stop hurting”. And then it occurred to me. That is exactly how this ankle issue happened. And it’s exactly how the plantar fasciitis happened a few months ago, and it’s exactly how the exertion migraines happened with the weight lifting that landed me in the ER before that. It’s that concept of – this is okay because eventually I’ll reach my goal of what I want to do, and the pain will stop. What I’ve learned however, is sometimes the pain doesn’t stop. Actual damage is a real and present danger.
At any rate. Marathon training (even marathon training recovery) is still giving me powerful lessons. I didn’t finish all of the sets and did eventually stop the stupid lunges. When I started exercising a long time ago I had had trouble motivating and pushing myself and would phone in half my workouts. Then I learned to love pushing myself and loved finding continual improvement.
I’ve learned another valuable lesson today though, and that is when to pull back. When to check myself and realize I am human, and do have limits. It’s humbling, but it’s real.
Weekly video update – not much but still doing what I can. 🙂
A few months ago I was focused almost exclusively on speed work in my running. In fact I think that it is probably one of the main mistakes I made in my downward spiral that ended with this injury issue I’ve been working through. I had wanted a fast-for-me marathon finish time for my debut marathon, but instead will now be sitting out completely; an option I didn’t even think was really possible.
At any rate, I’ve been doing what I can in the mean time to recover (video down below). The slower pace has some benefits too. Mostly, I’m spending a lot more quality time with my boys and with our dog. I’ve gone on several walks with my sons and last week my 9 year old biked 6 miles with me. It was a PR for him in distance! 🙂 He now wants to make it a regular thing we do together, which is so amazingly awesome. It’s been really great to get outside with them and get some exercise together. No, these low intensity family workouts are not going to earn me any medals or PRs. I don’t finish feeling sweaty and badass. However, these workouts are completely priceless. We’re spending quality time together moving, getting fresh air and talking about things away from the video games. So right now I’m working on this “slow work”, and plan to do more of it, even when I get back to training. I don’t need a medal to know we’re doing something good by staying active together.
What ideas do you have for family fitness? Always looking for more ideas to incorporate. 🙂
After a short yet very painful run on Monday I realized this isn’t my marathon year. Letting go of something I’ve worked so hard for for 11 months is not easy. This injury has hurt in more ways than one. I spent a lot of time negotiating with myself and trying to find a way to just run it anyway without the training build up. After a lot of research and consulting with my coach I just don’t believe that is a healthy option for me at this point.
Once I realized that I was really out of the race, I had a week of what I will just call an adult (okay maybe not even that grown up) hissy fit. I wanted to run this marathon so badly. I had honestly been looking forward to this last month of difficult long runs more than the race itself and I never even got to run my longest distance in training. It sucks. Am I over it? Nope. But I’m definitely getting there. Here is a video recap of that decision, and a new (and probably smarter) plan for 2016.
News flash! Marathon training is hard! This week has been especially difficult because I haven’t done anything. One might think that a week off of running would feel good after so much running. Far from it. I have been loving the increase in mileage and miss it very much. I’ve had to take the week off due to an ankle injury. Specifically peroneal tendonitis. My friend Scott explains it well here:
In talking with my orthopedic surgeon, this happened from the combination of increasing my mileage and also changing my form. I had been a solid mid foot runner until late last November when I did some research, read some books and figured fore foot running was the new awesomesauce and so I need to do it. I completely changed my form and specifically my foot fall. This was okay for the first few months but now that I’m running higher mileage it’s impacting me in a negative way. So the new focus is now rehabbing this ankle injury, getting back into shoes that I know work (hello Asics!) and getting comfortable with my comfort zone which is the mid foot running again.
I honestly thought marathon training was going to be difficult due to just the sheer volume of extra miles and time on the road. I was not anticipating any injury (I’m lucky to be a pretty healthy person). I was also not anticipating the need to find this special combination of things that work. And there is a LOT of experimentation that goes in to this. Nutrition, shoes, hydration, socks, speed, form, the list goes on.
And, Summer is almost over. I decided I wanted to run this marathon last October. I’ve been working on and dreaming of this for a year. I still need to get this ankle functioning again, find the perfect combination of everything, and finish building up my mileage.
Run to Race 