I got a new shoe on Monday...

OK, it might not be great for running but.... Yes, I appear to have a stress fracture. I know! How could that have possibly happened with all the running, tennis and various other training I have been doing? OK, maybe I was overdoing it a bit. There was not a particular event that happened that I can point back to and say this is where I injured myself. The short version is I ran my 14 miles on Saturday, felt fine, not anything other than normal. I practiced serving tennis balls on Sunday for about 45 minutes. Fine, not a lot of running involved there... After tennis, I went to Publix and as I was walking around the aisles, my left foot had a weird pain in it. I guess shopping is more strenuous than I realized!

I iced it when I got home and it really didn't help. It feels fine when I am seated but hurts to walk. Thus the boot... Normally, I wouldn't run to the doctor but with the schedule for the marathon and triathlons coming up I didn't want to waste a lot of time waiting to see if it would heal itself. The conclusion is that I most liekly have a stress fracture. I am supposed to wear the boot until Friday and then go back for a follow up Friday afternoon. On the bright side, I can swim and bike all I want. I think I might have been on suicide watch otherwise...

My doctor is really great, he seems to understand the torture of not being able to stay active. Depending on how things look on Friday, he said he may let me run ONE mile on Saturday and possibly TWO on Sunday. That sounds so funny to me because that feels like nothing now after crossing the 10 mile threshold on a regular basis. The guys in my group and I were just just saying on Saturday how funny it is that in March the ING half was so monumental and now we are running that distance and more every Saturday. To go back down to 1 mile is like a walk around the house. I am going to do what the doctor says, it is not something I really want to mess around with. I may end up bowing out of the Acworth Triathlon in a couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes...

For now, on my list of 14,001 things to be happy about, I can still swim!

Running on Empty

That is the way I felt when I got up this morning to meet my run club for the weekly long run. My alarm went off at 5 AM which was probably a little too early but I am notorious for hitting snooze 5 or 6 times before I actually get up and needed to be at our meeting spot with a cooler of ice by 6:30. Pretty much every muscle in my body was hurting due to my workout on Thursday (I did weights and cardio with DJ and then had what ended up being a 2-hour tennis lesson that evening). I rolled out of bed, got dressed and in the car by 5:45. Today, the scheduled run was 14 miles so I had to bring my fuel belt and a couple of GU gels for the road.

Despite my overwhleming desire to sleep late today, I was soooo glad I got up and went to run club. I would have never had the motivation to run 14 miles on my own today given my aches and pains. The group is fun too, we generally talk the whole way which helps distract you from the distance. We had decent weather, not too hot, not too humid, decent amount of cloud cover. Overall, it was a comfortable run. I would prefer running without the fuel belt but there aren't tables with little cups of water everywhere like there are at the races so you do what you have to do to avoid passing out from dehydration. :)

After the run, there was a speaker. The topic for today was self motivation and how to focus on your goal by using positive affirmations to get past the pain of running or other negative thoughts that might get in the way of completing the goal. It was kind of interesting, she touched on some kind of self-hypnosis thing. I'll have to read more on it later, at that point I was needing to get up off of the curb I was sitting on and stretch my legs. (the positive affirmations I was trying to use to eliminate the pain in my arse and legs at that point were failing me...)

Over the past two days I have had a couple of people mention the topic of ice baths to me. It has been kind of random because they just mention it out of the blue and then I happened to read another blog about someone who had tried it. After I had great difficulty getting up from the curb after the speaker finished this morning, I thought today might be the day for an ice bath! I stopped at QT for the ice, grabbed my wallet, got out of the car almost to the door and then realized not only had I left my keys in the car but had left the car running! Hmmm.... perhaps I was a little disoriented from the run... crazy..... Two bags of ice in the tub, some cold water and 10 minutes later I was feeling pretty good. I will not lie, the ice bath is not for the faint of heart. The first 3 minutes are a bit torturous but after about the three minute mark I acclimated to the cold water. It definitely helped, my legs were feeling pretty good afterwards.

On tap for tomorrow: Biking! Either at Stone Mountain or in and around the neighborhood. We'll see how I feel when I wake up...

Mid-week update...

Not much to tell. I took Monday off to rest. Tuesday, I decided nothing sounded better than returning to my roots and going for a swim workout. Lately, I have pretty much just been swimming laps. This time, I pulled a new workout off of swimplan.com and did a 2,000 meter workout (backstroke, freestyle and breaststroke). The workout was mostly drills, pulling and kicking which makes the time pass quickly in the pool.

Today I got a short run in with my fledgling run club. It is pretty much just me an 2 others at this point and the 2 others don't stay the whole time. The one person I wanted to help start running has yet to show.... I guess I need to work on my skills in motivating others! Oh well, I needed to get a mid-week run in anyhow.

We had a major storm last night. The top of one of our larger trees was blown out by the wind, It just kind of twisted off and fell into the yard... taking out the birdhouse my aunt handpainted which was occupied by a family of birds. The house was smashed into several pieces and the largest part of the branch pummeled into the ground pretty hard (as anything would from 20 feet up) so I don't know if there were any bird survivors. It is kind of sad, I really enjoyed watching the birds fly in and out of their house.

Of other wildlife interest, my Dad thinks my "foxes" are actually coyotes. He is the expert so I will go with that opinion. I saw them out in the street one afternoon last week. I am told they eat small pets. So far, they have not found the bunnies that live in the yard as I saw one today. whew... Maybe I should warn them about Wile E. Coyote living in their midst.

For the weekend: The good news is that my weekend tennis commitments are over so I can actually do my long runs with the Get Fit group! I am very excited as we are into the 14 mile range now and it is difficult to keep running for 2+ hours unless you are really self-motivated. Somedays I am , somedays not so much. I do know that if I am with the group I will definitely keep running. The other upside to being done with tennis is that not only are Saturdays free but Sundays too so I can get some bike work in this Sunday! Stone Mountain, here I come! If you see anyone chugging around the mountain in what appears to be the wrong gear, that might just be me! :)

Official 1500 Time: 6:26

not too bad.... much better than I thought I did.... much better than I thought I could do.... I was hoping for 7 minutes at best.

What to say about the Georgia Games...

It was pretty much the way I had pictured. Me and 14 former track stars running the 1500. (one former star even chose to wear her old college track uniform and was lamenting the fact that it had been 6 years since she raced - at the time I thought if the uniform still fit, she was still in running shape.)

I had looked at the previous year's results and knew this was not a well attended event. DJ had encouraged me to sign up so it was just one of things worth trying once in your life. As late as last night when I set the alarm clock I was on the fence about whether or not I would actually attend. So.... the alarm clock goes off, I decide to go. The event started at 9:45 but advertised that they might start as early as 30 minutes early so I needed to get to Marietta by 8:30ish. In my mind, I know I need to do some sort of warm up when I get there, no idea what kind of warm up or for how long.

I get to Marietta High School at about 8:30, check in and get my goody bag. There are maybe 40 people in the stands or running about including the volunteers. They start the 5000m race which had about 8 participants, men and women combined. Let me just say if you prefer to blend in with the crowd when you race, track meets are not the thing for you. I decide to take a 2 lap jog around the track to kill time (err, warm up). That done, not sure what to do... continut to warm up, check in on the field, how does this thing work anyhow? At 9:40ish, my event is called so I go down to the field and check in. I am given a number to adhere to my shorts for the "photo finish". Clearly, my reputation preceded me....

I am number 3. The significance of this is that there were only 3 women in the event. I think the men's numbers went up to 11 or so. The other two women appeared to be in their late 20s and were in official trackstar clothing. Not unlike this:



I, however, opted for my favorite black Nike running shorts with the pink insets and black underarmour shirt - so no one could see me sweating in fear. (picture not available ;)

I am clearly the newcomer in this crowd. Several had run the 5000 earlier, others had just finished the 4x100 relay. It kind of reminded me of a swim meet with people participating in multiple events. Anyhow, this newcomer had spikes/cleats/shoes with pointy things on the bottom trying to look like I knew what I was doing. When DJ encouraged me to sign up for the race, that was the only thing I was told - to get spikes. I had them. What to do with them, who knows... I am checking out the other's footwear, most have regular running shoes, some have spikes. I finally ask one of the men who seemed to know what was going on. I showed him my spikes and asked him if I should wear them or running shoes. He said I should try the spikes since they were lighter than my running shoes. (At my current level of speed, I suppose anything would help.) One more question, sir, where is the start line? Could I be any more of a tourist???

We make our way over to the start, there is some commotion over whether or not everyone is there (at one point, I thought they might do roll call - they could have - there were only 14 of us). Then there was further commotion about whether or not the women should run first and separate from the men. Luckily, the 2 women track stars protested and the men wanted to go ahead and run too. Thank goodness.... I had a brief flash of me running against (or desperately trying to catch up with) the two track stars.

Everyone lines up, men and women, the gun fires and we are off. My intention was to try and somewhat keep up with the pack for as long as I could. In retrospect, maybe not the best idea. I did keep up with one track star and one 20ish guy for about 2 laps. After that everyone left me in the dust, no one was really around me to help pace, I just had to kind of run as fast as I felt I could while still try to save something for the last 300 or so. (That was my strategy based on my extensive viewing of the Olympic Trials).

On the 3rd or 4th lap, the guy who gave me advice on the spikes runs past me and says "good pace" and keeps going. At the time, I thought he had already finished and was on a cool down lap but Rick told me later that he had been pacing off me the whole race and then kicked it in gear at the end. In retrospect, I should have kicked it in gear with him had I known he wasn't on a cooldown lap. So my planned sprint on the last 300 didn't really happen, it ended up being more of a sprint around the 150 mark. The same sort of sprint I do when the finish line is in sight at any race - I even sprinted at the ING at the end of 13 miles. I have no idea what my time was, I imagine it will get posted online at some point and I will pass it on. I do know I was not last. There were two men behind me. The one immediately behind me said to his kids, "well someone had to be last". To which they said "No, Dad, you weren't last - the guy in the green quit!" So, thanks to that guy and the guy in the green, I was not last. I also can proudly say I did not get lapped. In fact, I am pretty sure I won my age group which makes me a gold medalist at the Georgia Games. Does it count if you are the only one who shows up in your age group? :)

The track star diva in her college outfit who had not raced in 6 years... her time was 5:09. She's still "got it" as they say. DJ, the one who thought this race would be a good idea, didn't show. Another event for the memory bank.

slacker = me

I have done almost nothing but tennis this week. Last week's rain created a lot of make up matches which means I have played tennis every day for the past 6 days and have 3 more to go before I get a break. Luckily, after that most of the seasons are over! We are starting to practice for the USTA state championships in August so I won't get a true break until those are done. The bright side about all the tennis is it did force me to really look at my schedule and make a decision about which hobbies I want to concentrate on going forward. Clearly, I have too many interestes and need to scale back on something. The decision was to cut waaaaay back on tennis. I had gone from 7 leagues to 4 and now I am going to go down to 1 or 2. I abdicated my captain's throne for ALTA and even begged off the team which will help TREMENDOUSLY with my training schedule and gave me an immediate sense of relief when I passed the torch to the new captain!

On the calendar for tomorrow is the Georgia Games and the 1500. ummmmm..... we'll see. I have been fluctuating all day on whether or not I really want to go. Mostly a lack of confidence as I know I do not have the speed to run this event and keep up with the "real" runners. I don't think all that many people sign up for this thing so my picture of this event involves me and a handful of former track stars hoofing it around the track. I suppose as long as I don't get lapped, I will be fine :)

Next week, the plan is to get back on track with the triathlon training schedule. as I looked at my mileage for this month I have not biked AT ALL (not good!) and really haven't swam more than a few laps. Yes, slacker = me. Not enough hours in the day!

11 on the 11th

Its my Birthday, Its my Birthday.... OK, not really. My half-birthday. I have been trying for YEARS to get the half birthday thing to catch on - 2008 was the year! My Dad got me a Wii a few weeks back (I think he was just humoring me...) and today I got the wait staff and fellow diners at my local Hibachi restaurant - the Kirin House - to sing Happy Birthday and give me ice cream! (we did tell them it was my half birthday but they did the singing thing anyhow - it was pretty funny.)Finally, after 39 years, someone celebrated my half birthday! Tres exciting....

My scheduled long run this week was 11 miles. I have tennis both Saturday and Sunday so wasn't sure how to fit it in. I decided to get up at 4:00 this morning and make the run. I started off from Lifetime at 5:00 and ran from there to Peachtree Ridge High School, in and around a few parking lots, ending up with a couple of loops around Discover Mills. All in all, a little over 11 miles in around 2 hours and made it to work on time! :) It is funny how once you get over a certain mileage point it just doesn't seem all that far. Training for the half in March, 10 miles seemed HUGE, today it seemed like no big deal. I was more worried about the time frame and getting to work than whether or not I could make it. I guess that is a sign that my training is paying off in endurance. I may lose a couple of toenails but will be able to run forever!

One more Olympic related story... If you have not seen Hitler's Pawn on HBO, you have to watch it. It is the story of Gretel Bergmann (later changed her name to Margaret Lambert) who was a high jumper in 1930s Germany. She as used by the Nazi party as a means to ensure that the United States would not boycott the Olympics on 1936. The Nazi party sent her to training camps and led her to believe that she was going to be on the Olympic team. They kept her in training as a way to prove that Germany was not discriminating and that they had Jews on the Olympic roster. Once they had convinced the U.S. to participate in the games, in fact the day after the U.S. team got on the ship to travel to Berlin, she was sent a letter telling her that there was not room for her on the team and she could not participate. The official story was that she was injured and could not participate although that was not really what happened. I have always been fascinated by the history of WWII and Nazi Germany. As a kid, I read The Diary of Anne Frank and The Hiding Place several times. It is just so hard to believe the things that were endured during that time. I am not sure if it is still showing on HBO, it was on last week. If you have a chance to see it, it is such an interesting and heartbreaking documentary.