I ran again!!!

It's been a while. After missing my long runs the past three Saturdays, I finally ran again. I ran 17 miles today. It feels so good to get a big number.

Yesterday was Justin's birthday and we spent it at the ward camp out. It was kind of interesting preparing for my longest run yet while camping. I forgot to bring my gels and any water (duh!). I bummed some water from other campers and wrapped up a bunch of strawberry newtons in foil and stuck them in the little pocket in the back of my shirt (talk about comfortable).

My little injury friend was still bothering me at the start for sure, and I did hobble for a while. I'd have to say I didn't feel like my stride was natural until about 5 miles into it. And I never got to a point where it was pain-free. But it was manageable. I read tons of tips online about these shin splints and one guy swears wrapping his leg super tight helps. So I did that and I think it did but I can't be sure.

Everything went pretty smoothly until about the half-marathon point and all of my muscles got super tight. But I was able to get through it and am glad I could finally run again!

Man this is getting tricky!

Last month you could have asked me how my marathon training was going and I would have enthusiastically answered, "Great!" I hadn't missed a single day on my training schedule. Check, check, check... everything was going perfectly.

But now things have changed. I have obviously had to do a lot of adapting to heal from this silly injury (which is still hurting, p.s.), and now the reality of my life not being able to revolve around the marathon is staring me in the face. I just started a new job, Justin is off at scout camp, and I have visitors, all of which is exciting but fitting in training is becoming very difficult. I marvel how so many people can be consistent marathoners. They don't have jobs or children or responsibilities or what?!

But on that note, I have to remind myself that not everyone does a perfect training regimen for the marathon and they still finish. It may not be impressive, I may run 15 minute miles, but I'm going to finish that dang marathon, even if I don't get to run one more day before then! I will keep my spirits up, no more of this pity party stuff. I don't want to look back on my marathon experience and say, "well I finished, but the whole experience was awful." No way! So... adios perfect training schedule and adios ideal first marathon finishing time, but I'm still happy I'm going to run a marathon and I'm just going to enjoy this experience and roll with the punches!

Another missed long run

Yesterday I thought I would just run my long run today and see what happened. My leg has made very little improvement (still limping around everywhere, ergh!) but I just thought that if I missed 3 long runs in a row I might as well give up on the marathon. But I also thought that if I ran 16 miles on an injury I might make it bad enough that there would be no way I could run the marathon.

So late last night I got online and figured out exactly what's going on with my leg. It's called a posterior shin splint. That just means that instead of having pain in front of your shin bone, it's on the inside of your calf right between the calf muscle and shin bone and the pain goes down and wraps around your heel (exactly what I'm experiencing). It said whatever you do, don't run through the pain because it will most likely cause stress fractures in the tibia. I had the information I needed - I couldn't do my long run. Again.

So I rode my poor excuse for a bike (Justin said it looks like a bike some poor dude who got too many DUI's and lost his license would be riding around. It really does). I had been going for about 20 minutes (jealous of all the runners I passed along the way) when I hit a big bunch of sludge on the path. When I got out of the sludge, it started flinging off my bike tires all over me. My face, arms, legs, everywhere. I stopped to wipe it off the best I could (mostly just smearing it), and when I got back going, I cut off 2 biker dudes who yelled at me for being on the wrong side of the path. So that was a pretty awesome experience.

I went home discouraged and went to the gym to do 3 more lousy miles on the elliptical. I did some strength exercises and I'm just hoping this thing will be healed enough to run next Saturday, and that I still have the stamina to do it. If I go off my training schedule, I'm supposed to do my 20 miler next week. Tiffany's schedule is 16 miles. I'd be exstatic to get the 16. So all I can do for now is cross train and hopefully heal.

Hope

So I'm here in Oceanside, CA visiting my brother. New terrain to discover, beautiful Southern California weather, ocean breezes... wouldn't it have been great to run every day here.... But my leg pain has really been overstaying its welcome and despite my efforts with ibuprofen, ice and rest, it wasn't getting better at all. In fact, two days ago it hurt so bad after I ran to put something back at the grocery store that I just wanted to cry (more from the anger about my injury than the pain though, although it did hurt bad).

Then Justin asked me if I was taking ibuprofen around the clock. I told him no, that I was just taking it when my leg bothered me. He suggested I take it more often so I started doing that 2 days ago. It really helped and today I decided to try to run. I was supposed to run 16 miles. There was no way I was going to push it that hard on my first day back but I was really happy because I think I was able to do 6 or 7 and the pain was manageable. I am definitely disappointed that I've had to slack on 2 long runs in a row, but I'm just glad I could run at all today. So I'm gonna keep up with my steady stream of ibuprofen and hopefully this next week I'll be able to run again.