Running in the Moment

It was a busy weekend, and now back to work!  Although It feels like it’s been nonstop and I haven’t gotten a break.  Thank goodness I have NOTHING planned other than a run and yoga next weekend.

Now to recap where I last left off on my blog… Last Thursday morning I woke up early (early for me, 5:30a) and my tri-buddy picked me up to go running in Tilles Park.  He knew we weren’t going to run terribly far and it would be a combination of walk/running because my hip isn’t 100% yet, but I was glad he suggested we go to try to start getting into a morning workout routine.  Well, I’m glad I got up, but I can’t say I’m glad that I ran!  It was pitch dark out (the park is not lit at all, thank goodness he had a headlamp and I brought my flashlight) freezing cold!  Walking breaks were miserable because once you got warm from running, it brought our heart rates back down and we weren’t putting out much body heat.  It was awful!!  I ended up running more than I had planned because it was just too darn cold to walk!  Once we finished our 2.7 miles, I was so happy to be getting back into the car to head back home.  In retrospect I was really under dressed, so that was probably part to blame – if I had warmer gloves and more layers it might have been more enjoyable.  When I got to work I was happy that my workout was done for the day, but I think if I become (which I’ve been trying for the past couple of years to be) a morning work out person, it will be at the gym until it gets warmer out!!

Friday I got up early and went to PT (early, up at 5:30, in the clinic by 6:30a) but the hips are starting to feeling better and better, so it must be working!  I layed low Friday night, staying in and just watched a lifetime movie.  JMR was out-of-town with a buddy for a basketball game, so the plan was to lay low most of the weekend, but that didn’t happen.  I ended up getting up at 7a on Saturday to head to the gym to run/walk 3 miles, and then to my sister’s to babysit while she did her first yoga class.  After that I ran some errands, did some laundry and cleaning and then met my friend and her husband at 4p for yoga.  It was tough!  I thought that since I’ve been doing more core work in PT that I would be stronger, but I thought wrong.  Boy was I wobbly!

After yoga we went to grab coffee to discuss items we still needed to take care of for our tri club’s annual 5k and 10k race, since we are the tri club volunteer coordinators this year.  So far we have almost 30 volunteers, hooray!  It only took a little over and hour to go through and get done what was needed, but we stayed for another hour or so chatting and catching up since the last time we met up was before the holidays.

Then I went home to make stir-fry using the new Wok that my sister gave me for xmas!  The stir-fry turned out great and I even had leftovers for the next day.

Sunday I woke up and decided to test out the hip and do some spinning, so I went over to my favorite spin place, Saint Louis Spinning, and did the 9:30a class.  I hadn’t taken this instructors class before so I was a bit worried based on past experiences, but she turned out to be great and her music was pretty good too.  The only thing that wasn’t good was me!  I was so out of shape that my heart rate flew up to 150 just when I was starting out.  I kept the resistance pretty low the entire time to make sure that I wouldn’t irritate my hip, but it was still a good workout for me since I’m out of shape!  After that I ran home to do more cleaning, put my xmas decorations away and plan a grocery list for meals for the entire week.  I’ve slowly gotten better and better about cooking all of my meals and so now I’m trying to be more organized and not run to the store every other day.  After some planning I was off to the store!  I also picked up the ingredients for dinner that night since I was cooking dinner for JMR.  On the menu was hamburgers (no bun for me) and sweet potato fries with some veggies.

Fast forward to yesterday evening, I was off to a good start on the sweet potato fries, so far they looked good!

I put them in the oven and then went to make the hamburgers.  The instructions for the recipe I found online said to cook on each side 3-5 minutes on high heat.  Within only a couple of minutes of them being in the pan, I smelled smoke and looked over and saw smoke coming from the burgers!  Oh no!  I quickly flipped them over hoping that they could be salvaged but they were pretty burnt.

Yeah, you’re probably wondering why I was taking this picture and not saving the burgers. I’m wondering the same thing now too. Poor burgers.

I turned the heat down and was able to cook them to about medium before I had to take them off in fear of them turning into complete char, but there was still a lot of smoke even on the lower setting.  Also, when I took the sweet potatoes out they had more of a steamed-like texture than a crispy baked one.  Bummer.  As an additional bonus, my house now smelled like burnt hamburgers (my coat actually still does have a hint of hamburger smell to it, ick), I had to leave my porch door open for almost an hour for the smoke and smell to dissipate.

This morning I got up at 5:30a and went to PT, I had an early meeting at work so I wasn’t able to have her stretch me and do Astym (a technique that is supposed to help generate new healthy tissue and remove unwanted scar tissue, it’s pretty painful!) , but it’s better than not doing anything at all!

Back to work for me, I have a run planned on the treadmill tonight, but might have to ride my trainer instead and move it to tomorrow morning if the gym is too crowded.  This time of year and the gym is not a good combination, especially in the evenings!  Wish me luck!

Lots of good things to post today – 2013 is already getting busy!!  I finished up 2012 with two great runs, I ran/walked 1.5 miles on Friday and ran/walked 2.5 on Monday (yeah, a bit further than I had planned on, but it felt so darn good.  The last .5 miles were all walking) and both runs felt pretty good – a little stiffness but no crazy sharp pains or anything close to what my runs felt like in October.  I’ll consider it a victory!

I also attempted to cook dinner for New Year’s Eve – we stopped by my Aunt and Uncle’s for a bit beforehand and ended up having so much fun we didn’t get home until almost 10p!  It was a late dinner, but the Halibut served over pureed cauliflower and roasted asparagus turned out great!  And I managed to use the new food processor JMR gave me for xmas without any incidents resulting in a trip to the ER.  Little did JMR know but the entire meal was Paleo and I plan to stick to eating that way for 2013 to improve my health as well as get me into better race shape (which isn’t saying much considering the shape – or lack-of – that I’m in now).

Speaking of racing, I was asked to be volunteer coordinator for my local Triathlon club and we have the biggest event we put on each year coming up, which means me and the other fellow volunteer coordinator, my friend L, scrambling to organize volunteers for the race.  Stressful!  I’m meeting up with L to do yoga on Saturday, and then have coffee and discuss volunteer planning.  It should be fun!

I also spoke to my tri buddy earlier this evening and he’s getting back into the swing of things of having a desk job after working from home for several years.  He’s struggling with what I (and many others as well) struggle with every year, working out during the winter and dealing with the sleepiness of a desk job that seems to show up around 2p each day.  I didn’t have much advice except the fact that it should be getting easier/better soon when the days get longer.  In the meantime, I agreed to meet him for a run/walk tomorrow morning at 6a.  Oh boy.  He’s wearing his headlamp and I’ll be holding a flashlight (I never thought I’d be running in the dark so I’ve never had the need for a headlamp), so wish me luck!

Finally, I’m meeting my coach next Wednesday to finalize a training plan and get prepared for the 2013 racing season.  The Triple-T race I signed up for this May sounds really daunting now, so hopefully having a coach will get me motivated and I will get my workouts in!  Although I’m not sure I mentioned the entire contents of the race already, just that I had signed up for a tri in May.  I will elaborate on the details tomorrow as this post has already gotten too long!

Off to take Patrick on a walk and then head to bed somewhat thereafter to wake up for the freezing run outside tomorrow am!

I know it’s been awhile since I last posted, when I’m not running, training or racing, I don’t feel like I have enough to post about!  Even so, not too much has gone on, just the usual busyness that comes with the holidays and of course, PT.  I also have not been doing much on the workout front, as most activities were irritating my hip.  So, as a last resort, I called it quits on all activities other than PT in order to just try to rest my hips.  So as you can guess, the Icy Iron contest I was so pumped out about at the beginning of December didn’t happen.  Bummer, but I figured it was better to rest up and get better for the actual racing season rather than prolong my recovery for a virtual one.

Now that the holidays are over I’m ready to get back into a regular routine during the week and weekends, which will also include….. running!  Not a lot of it, but I got the green light yesterday from my PT to start running, but only very gradually.  As in, walk .25 miles, run .25 miles, repeat for only a mile.  Hopefully next week I can work up to 1.5 miles.  Still, it’s a huge improvement from where I was 2.5 months ago, in pain and hardly walking without limping.  Now I am finally walking pain-free and just occasionally get a dull ache in my hips from sitting too long.  I really feel that the stretching and strengthening exercises she has had me do each day have really improved my strength and I plan on keeping up the regimen (although probably only 3x a week) when I’m officially finished with PT to ensure that I won’t be returning!

I do have other exciting news, I purchased my triathlon bike on Wednesday!  A 2013 Cannondale Slice Women’s Ultegra 3.  Unfortunately it doesn’t ship from Cannondale until January 2nd, so it will be a while before I get to actually ride it, but here’s a picture to hold you over in the meantime.

Oh, and no, I did not meet my ‘weight goal’ that I was trying to hit by the end of December (and was using the bike as incentive if I met the goal).  However, because I’ve been so disciplined with PT and staying off running so that I can come back fully recovered, I thought that seemed like a good enough reason to justify buying it (other than because I was planning on getting it anyways ;)).   I still plan on keeping Peaches, there will be plenty of rides where a road bike will be more appropriate and plus, we’ve been through a lot together, so I couldn’t just get rid of her.  We’ve had some great rides, Redman probably being our best… my dad’s 62 miler probably being the worst (for her, not me!).  Poor thing, that gravel had her shaking the entire ride.

I’m off to run some last-minute errands!  JMR and I are celebrating our Christmas tonight since he goes home each year to spend it with his family, and I have a few last-minute things to get and wrap.  One of them involving this (taken at an ugly christmas sweater party a couple of weeks ago):

Yes, those are huge red pom pom’s for noses.

Oh yes, I made those sweet sweatshirts.  I became so attached after all of my hard work, I wouldn’t even let JMR take his home for fear that he might accidentally put it in the washer and ruin it.  I think they turned out lovely and will be making an appearance every year.

Happy Friday!!

Quick post to just check in, I can’t believe it’s almost December, this month has flown by!

I’ve been trying to get back on the work-out wagon, which hasn’t been easy.  On top of that, my eating has been anything but clean over the past week, so I’m trying to get back on the healthy-wagon in that area too (Good grief, I don’t even want to discuss how much I ate on Thanksgiving, it was ridiculous!) I did manage to get a really good workout on the elliptical this weekend, so now that I’ve got that machine figured out, it will be a good substitute for running.

One thing that will force motivate me to get into a routine is a competition my triathlon club has over the winter, called the Icy Iron.  You choose 1 or 2 times an Ironman distance and have six weeks to complete that distance.  If you complete it, you get a gift card ($5-10?) to a local bike shop, and if you have the most miles in one of the disciplines, you also win another prize.  I chose to do 2x the distance, which sounded pretty manageable and would equate to swimming .8 miles, biking 37 miles and running 8.7 miles per week.  You are allowed to substitute the elliptical for running, which is what I will probably end up doing for most of the challenge.  So nothing too crazy workout-wise, but enough to ease me back into training which starts in January (yipes!).

So the goal for the rest of this month/December is to get back into the routine of working out almost every day and to lose a few pounds that I’ve put on since Redman and lose just a few more to get closer to my planned race weight.  You’d think someone would lose a lot of weight while training for Ironman but from what I’ve read and heard from other club members is that unless you are really careful with your diet, that usually isn’t the case (especially women)!  It’s going to be a challenge considering right now we’re in the middle of the holidays, which means tempting food is always around (especially cookies, which are my weakness), but I’m hoping to stay strong!

I did provide myself an incentive… a really huge one if I stick with it…. a triathlon bike!  I’ve been going back and forth between getting aero bars and a more aggressive fit for my road bike or just getting a triathlon bike instead, and have finally decided to go the triathlon bike route.  I got fitted this weekend and know which one I want (and it is soooo pretty), but will wait to order it until after xmas when I’ve hopefully met my fitness/health goal!

Back to work!

Short edition, as in, just a quick post to summarize the trip – I will post more tomorrow when I’m more lucid 🙂  Six hours of sleep over a span of three days has me exhausted!

Overall, I’m glad I went, and had a blast (absolute blast!!) volunteering.  Everyone I met was just as excited as I was about the race and was so happy to be there volunteering.  It was also a different experience witnessing the race from the sidelines/a volunteers perspective, and to also get a chance to see the lead men and women come blowing through on the bike!  Just wow.  The run aid station later that evening was also so much fun, I got lots of compliments on the pirate costume I wore (the aid station theme was ‘Pirates’), and seeing the 14-16 hour finishers come through the aid station was such an inspiration, everyone looked so focused and ready to finish.

I have so much more to elaborate on, and I did take some pictures as well 🙂  However to finish up my summary of the weekend, I registered this morning and will be there November 17, 2013 racing Ironman Arizona!!!!  I can’t wait to see how I feel tomorrow when it really sinks in and I have caught up on my sleep 😉

(written last night, just posting now)

….since my last post was almost a week ago!  I’ve been busy but doing un-fun things, like physical therapy.  My hip is feeling slightly better, but is still achy and not how I thought it would feel after a month of PT.  On top of that, my PT told me that after my Ortho appointment on December 3rd, that if I got the green light to run, it would only be FIVE minutes at most for the first two weeks!  FIVE MINUTES!!  That’s 3.5 miles a week!  Good gawd, I am going to turn into mush.  He said aquajogging was ok, so perhaps I will turn to that so I don’t lose all of the running fitness I’ve gained over the years.

On the other hand, to be fair, I’ve had this injury on an off for the past four years, so to expect to feel 100% after one month of PT is a tad unrealistic.  It’s just that I’ve been so compliant, I thought that I would get rewarded a bit more for my good behavior.  Well, I guess not.

Other than PT, I also rode my trainer solo for the first time this week, and people weren’t joking when they said 1. It’s boring and 2. It’s tough!  Much tougher than riding outside, at least it feels that way.  I rode for 45 minutes and only went 10 miles according to my odometer.   Good grief!  I’m going to have to figure out how to make the time pass faster so I can ride more than ten miles!

So other than being disappointed with my recovery progress, I’ve also been freaking out about this weekend.  It’s finally here. This weekend I am flying to Arizona to volunteer at Ironman Arizona and the next day, signing up to race it in 2013.   It’s almost making me sick to my stomach and I haven’t even signed up yet!  I guess it’s because it’s really confirming the fact that most of next year will be spent training.  Early morning workouts, long training days on the weekends, sacrificing staying out late with friends and oh so many other things.  I’m ready for the challenge and excited to begin training, but I think part of me is enjoying being a ‘little lazy’ and the other part of me is freaking out because I’m signing up to complete 140.6 miles and my swimming and biking fitness have gone dramatically downhill and on top of that I can’t even run a step right now!  I realize I have over a year to train and work on nutrition/strength training, I just think that being on the injury list is making me have a bit more anxiety.  Worrying over things like, how much longer will it take until I can run 10 miles again?  I signed up for a ridiculous race in May that I won’t even mention yet because, well, you’ll understand why when I do post about it later.  But I need more than a couple of months to build up a good half-marathon base by then, so I better be healed soon!

So many unknowns running through my head.  So for now I really need to focus on what I can control and that is biking (mostly on the trainer now that it gets dark so early, whooo!) swimming, and sticking with my PT regimen.  After I get back from AZ, I’m going to figure out a ‘workout’ plan for the rest of November and December so that I will ride three times a week and swim at least twice a week (that’s a lot for me, since, well, I detest swimming).  Hopefully by following that plan, I won’t lose all of my fitness!

Off to bed!

Oh boy… I’ve really taken a much longer than planned hiatus from my blog.  Once I was diagnosed with bursitis in both hips and I stopped working out for the most part, I also started to slack with posting….  Even though it looks like I still won’t be running for another month (boo, hiss), I still have plenty to post about so I just need to get back into the habit.

Other than physical therapy, riding my trainer and loathing the elliptical, I have also started to make some changes to my diet.  At the end of October I started eating Paleo, which is basically cutting out all grains, legumes, certain starches, certain oils and dairy.  So basically NO processed food, which I am a horrible offender of, partially because I am not huge into cooking (cooking for one doesn’t sound like fun) and also because I usually choose what’s easiest to make (lean cuisine frozen meals).  However, over the past few years I’ve noticed that my stomach tends to get grumpy after meals more often than not and my migraines have also started to flare up more frequently.  After reading about this ‘lifestyle’ (I hate the word ‘diet’, I’m not dieting, I’m changing my approach towards food), it sounded like a good route to try and to see if it alleviated my occasional stomach issues, migraines and hopefully would give me more energy (although I blame my sluggishness to the colder weather and shorter days…).

I’ve had a hard time sticking 100% Paleo, as I’ve learned, if you don’t plan ahead of time it’s a pretty hard to eat that way.  Most meals need to be prepared and coming home at 7:30p after physical therapy, cooking is the last thing I want to do.  However, I did notice on the days I did slip up (mostly it involved eating bread), good lawd my stomach let me know alll about it, and it would take several days for it to go back to normal.

Overall I do feel more alert and awake, my stomach is really happy and even though I have had a migraine, the benefits seem to outweigh the cons, which for me is the time it takes to prepare foods.  Oh heck, I’ll be honest, the biggest con is that I don’t really know how to cook and never have!  So it’s been a learning curve, but I think it’s moving in a good direction.  This weekend I’m devoting most of Sunday to prepare either chilli (minus the beans) or stew to freeze for dinner the next week and also chopping up veggies for salads, etc and planning my meals.  It’s going to be a pain, but I think after time I’ll get the swing of things and it will become easier.

This morning I decided to try to stick with it 100% for two more weeks and see how things go.  Regardless, I do think that my body does feel better eating this way (breads/grains could be the culprit to my stomach issues), but the one food group I might not be able to do without is dairy.  I love my cheese!!

Off to get new tires on my car (I just love spending money on fun things like that!), fun!

Ohmy….lots of catching up to do….let’s start with last Friday (it’s too late to upload pictures, so perhaps tomorrow.  I know pictures always make posts more fun to read :))….

After the awful run on Thursday, resting on Friday seemed like a good idea.  I loaded up on ice packs to sit on/put on my hips during the day at work and felt like it was yet another proactive plan to getting myself ready for race day that Sunday.  After work that night I was struck by an even better plan.  Biofreeze!  I would get samples at the expo and slap them on my sore hamstring area and hips and things would be good.  Everything would be numb and …. the race would happen!

I woke up Saturday am on a mission to get as many Biofreeze packets as possible at the expo.  I went to the expo with a tri club friend who wanted to check out some shoes he was interested in that were on sale for an awesome deal compared to retail.  We managed to wander around the expo for over an hour and get some good info/samples (and lots of Biofreeze ones for me, score!).

When I got home I made a quick lunch and then dropped by my sister’s house to catch up and also drop off the Halloween bib I bought for baby C for, well, Halloween.  My favorite holiday!  After seeing the little one (boy is she cute!), I ran some errands and then JMR and I set out for dinner.  It was quite the dinner adventure, I’ve never cancelled an order and walked out of a restaurant before, but our first choice ended up being a horrible choice.  Terrible, terrible waitress.  (I sound like a restaurant snob, I promise you I’m not. You would have done the same, I promise!) We ended up grabbing dinner at one of the usual (and reliable) places that we go to and got home around 10p where I promptly crashed into bed.

I woke up at 5a for my usual race routine, and finally at 5:45a we were off and heading downtown.  I had a pit in my stomach, but I always do for any race (it’s silly, I know), and figured it would go away once we were parked and settled.  Getting down to this race could result in looong lines to get off the highway and park, so I was most anxious about parking.  However, we were parked and ready a little after 6a.

Wow.  That was it.  We were parked and ready to get going.  And then it hit me, I realized I was downtown, getting ready to start the race…..and no amount of Biofreeze was going to help me.  As I sat there in the car, my hips and hamstrings had a dull ache, and I wasn’t even moving!  I remembered the awful run last Thursday and the entire painful 6.2 miles during the race last weekend…and then I realized that showing up was a mistake and I was delusional for even thinking I could have pulled this off.  My body was tired, I rocked the season I had planned, and if anything, this was my D race.  Not worth worsening an injury.  I looked over at JMR and told him we had to go back home, that this race wasn’t happening for me, and if it did, it would result in a loooong walk back to the finish from whatever mileage I dropped, because the whole thing was going to hurt.  Not worth it.  I felt really awful for the ridiculously early am wakeup call just to trudge back home, but this was going to be a really stupid idea.  So we headed back home.

Toughest decision I’ve made in a while and really doubted myself after.  It felt like Chicago 2010 where I did the same thing… had the same hip issue, had paid for race entry/plane tickets/hotel room, and figured that I didn’t have much to lose to show up.  However on race day, I knew I didn’t have it in me to run a marathon with my hips in so much pain.  Ok, a marathon is not exactly a half, so not really a true comparison, but it felt just as hard walking away from this race as it did in Chicago.  I felt like I missed out on a party.

So that was that.  I went back to bed (it was only 6:45a by the time we got back) and then later went to get mexican for lunch.  I felt like a sloth skipping the race, so why not Mexican food too?  I was good and just had water though, no Margaritas to add to the sloth-fest.

That night I felt frustrated, irritated and upset.  I needed some routine/rules in my life again! The past few weeks I had been mostly couch bound and eating whatever items looked healthy (well, mostly) and good and giving myself breaks from working out because of my hips.  Enough was enough.  I had my ortho appt the next morning and then I would know what the issue was and also be on the path to treatment.  So I should do the same with my eating habits, be on the way to a cleaner/healthier path.  I won’t elaborate on my changes just yet, but will soon!

So on to the appt, just as I thought, my stupid IT band is really tight and grumpy.  What I didn’t realize was that it was causing bursitis in both hips.  On top of that I had some really grumpy hamstrings, but the dr said those should recover much faster than the bursitis.  So the end result is six weeks of no running and instead, physical therapy 1-3 x a week for at least six weeks.  Oy.

After the ‘no running’ confirmation by my dr, after work yesterday I went to the gym and tried the elliptical (which he recommended as an alternative workout) and it sucked.  I still just don’t understand that machine.  I find it so boring, I guess, because I don’t understand what levels/resistance make it a hard or challenging workout?  Regardless, I only stuck with it for a little over 10 minutes and finally ended up on the stationary bike.  I liked that better, well, because it was my thing.  I could bike.  Elliptical?  Foreign to me.  I do plan to master that darn machine!  I know it can give me a good workout!  Anyways, I did lots of seated sprints and definitely worked up a sweat, however with my sore hamstrings, where my rump sat on the hard seat, it actually hurt 😦  No more of that for a while either.

So that brings me to tonight, where I hopped in the pool as a last-ditch resort of exercise.  I swam 1600 at a snail’s pace (really, wow, one month out of the pool really made a difference), but I got it done.  My mini-goal for the next couple of weeks is just 30 minutes of exercise each day.  I know it’s not a ton, but I’ve had so much trouble getting back into the swing of things, and also adding that I can’t run, well, it’s just a reason/motivation to get me to the gym to do something.

So now I’m off to bed – early morning tomorrow at work because I have to leave early for my first PT appointment.  Kind of excited!!  This hip pain is annoying and I’m ready to tell it who is boss!

Monday, schmonday.  Today was pretty uneventful at work, just the usual meetings and other things going on, which was a relief because I wasn’t in the mood for a crazy kind of day.  The weekend (as always) seemed too short and I needed to ease into the week.

I went to Panera for lunch and got my usual tuna sandwich, and I must say, I think they’ve been reading my blog.  The past few times I’ve ordered it, the sandwich wasn’t messily wrapped at all and tuna wasn’t oozing out of the sides.  Granted, this means I’m probably getting less tuna salad, but it’s much less messy and doesn’t require a fork.  Hooray!  I can also tell I’m not in training mode because the potato chips I used to always order as a side sounded really unappealing.  I even tried to eat them last week and couldn’t stomach them.  Argh, I almost wish I were training 1-2 hours a day just so I craved potato chips again, they’re delicious, why don’t my taste buds remember that?

When I got home from work I let the little guy out and promptly plopped on my couch to ice my right hamstring.  The left one was doing much better than yesterday but the right one had been whining at me all day.  I’ve already done one round of icing for 20 minutes and it feels a tad better, so hopefully after 3 more rounds of icing this evening, sleeping on an ice pack tonight, and bringing one to work to sit on, it will speed up the recovery.

The ice pack that is going to nurse my hamstring back to health (leftover from PT several years ago)

My roommate at work is coming to the race to cheer me, another coworker and a former consultant on, so now I really want to be part of the race.  I could just go and cheer, but after planning on running it, mentally it’s a touch switch of places to be on race day.  I’ll just have to see how things go this week, and if they don’t improve, I’m going to Michaels on Saturday to make some bad ass signs for my friends that will be racing.  I’m thinking lots of glitter….

Off to go grab my ice pack out of the freezer for round #2 of icing of the evening.  I may or may not be grabbing some frozen yogurt as well…. 🙂