wellz....

I started PT Tuesday. All she really did was evaluate and give me some stretches to do. I did amaze the PT with my flexibility. ("That doesn't hurt? You're SURE that doesn't hurt??") Yoga FTW!

So, doing the stretches, icing (which I've been neglecting because honestly, with this dull pain that hurts in a different place every day, I haven't known WHAT to ice, so she told me), PT twice a week for 6 weeks. I see her again tomorrow, then after that, I see the PT who is also a running coach and I absolutely can't wait to start driving him insane.

I was feeling a little bummed about the initial PT session. I WANT one of those PTs I hear about who tortures and works a person half to death. Someone who tells me to do some stretches and then shows me the door is so not worth my money. This had better be more intense tomorrow.

A friend/coworker was awesome enough to get me a guest pass to her gym and work with me on my swimming technique. It's better than I thought, but she gave me a few helpful pointers. Then we swam back and forth with kickboards FOREVER, which is awesome because (a) it's a FANTASTIC leg workout, which I will definitely keep utilizing, (b) we could chat while doing it, so the workout time flew by, and (c) it totally helped me fix the sinking leg problem I have while swimming.

I'm still not a fast swimmer, but now I'm swimming slowly with great form. :)

I'm also motivated to get in the pool and try out the new waterproof mp3 player. I'm borderline excited about swimming, actually!

Oh, and I gave myself extra cross-training motivation by joining The Million PALA Challenge. Now I HAVE to hit the gym 5 days a week.

But really, what I want right now more than anything, is to know when I can run again! I want to know that I at least have a chance at the Pig half. The persistent winter weather has helped me not to miss it as much as I could be, but then I see a runner or running clothes or something online or hear "Born to Run"....and I just want to hit the pavement again SOON. (Well, NOW...but realistically, SOON.) And this is why I'm going to drive the PT crazy.

Whoa.

Two of my friends' facebook status updates, less than an hour apart:

"No matter what happens, no matter how far you seem to be away from where you want to be, never stop believing that you will somehow make it. Have a unrelenting belief that things will work out, that the long road has a purpose, that the things that you desire may not happen today, but they will happen. Persist and persevere, your desired path remains possible."

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. - Lou Holtz" (That one was on my mom's page. <3)


Not dead. Just getting stronger.

Future Races

Races I'd like to do (mainly for my own records :))

Forest Hills 5k - 5/21
Redlegs 10k 6/11
Hyde Park Blast 4m - 6/25
Cincinnati Triathlon - 7/24
Mudathlon 8/13
TORN...the Newtown 5k is 8/13 too. I've done this every year that I've been running.The Mudathlon is expensive but sounds way more fun. :)
Cheetah Run 5k - 9/4
USAF Marathon - 9/17
Warrior Run 5k - 10/8

On a sad note, Warrior Dash Ohio is sold out. :( Wanted to do that one!!

Also, just found the Hands for Haiti half marathon and 5k on 5/21, in my hometown. If I can't do the Pig Half, maybe I'd be up for this one....???

This is no fun, no fun, looking at the wa-all

Everyone remember the episode where Michelle Tanner got put in time out, and that's what she sang?? That is exactly how I feel in the pool and on the stationary cardio machines that don't go anywhere. No fun, no fun, looking at the wavy blue line/screen/wall/etc.

But I'm still hanging in there. I tried out the hand bike at the gym yesterday. Holy crap. Upper body strength has never been my forte, but with the pushups and weights we do in circuit class, I'm about as strong as I ever have been. Two minutes worth of hills on that machine and my arms were ready to fall the heck off. I still did 20 minutes (3.8 miles) and then the plan was to do some strength training. I did all the leg exercises I'm allowed to do. It's been forever since I've done any weight machines, but that's my only option for legs, and OMG it felt good to pay my lower body some attention. I did leg extensions and curls (no foot contact with the ground, doc approved) and the hip abduction/adduction machines. I used to do about 100 pounds on those. I did 170 on one (I forget which), and 190 on the other, 3 sets of 10 reps. That was a small victory. I have some powerful hips! Thunder thighs are good for something!!

I decided against any arm exercises I was going to do after the handbike craziness, and besides, I was having an "I feel fat" day so I worked my abs to death. Felt good.

I ordered a waterproof mp3 player today. Zoning out to my music has made the cardio more bearable, and hopefully it will do the same for the pool. I know that swimming is about the best cardio I could be doing at the moment, for so many reasons, but it's sooooooooooooooooooooo boring. I've been having a hard time making myself get in the pool to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. I wish it was at least warm enough to find myself somewhere outdoorsy to swim.

The latest bothersome thing: articles EVERYWHERE about how to prevent injury. Grr. Nobody's perfect, but I tried to prevent injury. It just brings up those unhelpful thoughts that I couldashouldawoulda done something to not be dealing with this now. So I'm avoiding anything about injury prevention. It's not gonna help right now anyway, unless I need to be preventing injury on the handbike.

Oh God. If I hurt my shoulder, I give up. Imma take up competitive eating and gain 300 lbs and be done with it.

I'm thinking that if the Pig is definitely out (and kinda proceeding like it is), I may forego my dreams of a marathon before my birthday. I don't want to force it just so I can meet that goal, and spend money I may or may not have on travel and hotel and etc. The USAF marathon is 9/17, a month and 6 days after my birthday. Maybe that can be close enough. Plus my running buddy says she'll do that with me, so I don't have to endure long training runs alone.

Half Pig is my new goal. I hope I hope I hope. I won't feel quite so bad if I can do the half pig. Killing my old half PR would still be a victory.

As far as the leg goes, it still hurts, but I'm walking better. I've added extra calcium and vitamin D to my multi, and started religiously taking 660 mg of naproxen every morning. Following doc's orders. Fingers crossed!

The verdict is in

And the doc says.....stress reaction.

He showed me on the MRI what he was looking for. Bones are supposed to show up all gray on an MRI. Partway down my tibia are big areas of bright white. That, he says, is inflammatory fluid. Oh yeah, that was also present on the side of my calf, which means shin splints. Of course.

At first I actually felt relieved and validated - I KNEW this experience has been too ridiculous to be chalked up to shin splints. And a stress reaction in that bone totally explains the pain, instability, and weirdness I've been feeling for weeks.

Then I realized, oh crap. Stress reaction was the doc's worst case scenario. And that means.......

It means, he says, that if I were like MOST of his patients, he'd tell me to pretty much rest as much as possible besides essential daily activities. I'm not sure what kind of look I gave him, but it obviously told him that is not an option. I told him my husband would leave me if I couldn't exercise. I was pretty close to serious. For real, though, every bone in my body would have to be broken before I'd agree to avoid any type of exercise.

So what I can do: swim. Upper body weights. Anything that does not involve any sort of leg weight pushing on any sort of surface. Yoga is ok.

He says another month off running. I can probably bike before then. I'm not happy to lose the biking right about now. He suggested prednisone, which I vetoed, because God knows I need 'roid rage like I need to have both legs amputated. He did agree that I could try regular doses of Aleve (which I've also been avoiding, as I avoid meds unless I'm an 11 on a 1-10 pain scale) and see if that helps.

After I cried in front of everyone at the doctor's office, because I'm awesome, I went to the gym and took my stress out on the rowing machine. (I'm not even sure that I can do that, since technically my feet are on a surface....but the motion is all pulling with the upper body, not pushing with the lower, and it didn't hurt my leg at all - which is huge, since everything else short of sitting still does hurt - so I did it.) I was going to do a half hour. Then I realized that I did 5k in just under a half hour and I wanted to try to do 10k in under an hour. The rowing machine has so many numbers to keep an OCD person intrigued. Time, pace, 500 m splits, projected distance at an hour....it was like the Garmin and made me want to push myself. Plus, the cardio and all the movement were doing wonders for my anger and frustration. So I did an hour on the rowing machine for a total of 10,007 m. (My rowing speed is remarkably close to my running speed!)

When I stopped, I realized that I had 5 blisters on my hands. I gave myself more blisters in one hour than I did while training for a marathon. Gaaah. Maybe I DO tend to overdo things. My high pain tolerance and stubbornness are gonna kill me one day.

The aftermath of 10k on a rowing machine:

But I felt better!!

I'm trying to find local runners for beer and sympathy. There have to be some, as big as Pig training is around here, and as many first-timers as it attracts. No bites on multiple facebook posts yet, though. Non-runners are sympathetic, but they can only be so much so, when they don't really understand why people enjoy running to begin with. Healthy runners can offer a bit more sympathy as they can imagine how traumatized they'd be by an injury, but when it comes down to it, they can still run off the stress of the vicarious trauma. I need a support group!

Really, I do feel better at least having a name for things, knowing the course of action I need to take, and having a recovery time frame. It's better than being told it's just shin splints or I'll be ok soon. The treatment plan includes physical therapy, which I'm actually excited about. I'll be happy to have someone who can be monitoring how I'm doing and who will be able to tell me exactly what I'm capable of doing and when. One of the physical therapists there is a high school running coach, so I'm super stoked to have someone who will hopefully understand that I want to get back to running as soon as - safely - possible.

I'm not even thinking about the Pig right now. I'm not thinking about what I could've done to prevent this (hard when I see injury prevention articles posted everywhere) - sometimes injury happens no matter what you do. I could've done things differently, but nobody's perfect, and I've always made the best choices that I can make at the time. Two weeks before the USAF half, I twisted my knee because of an uneven sidewalk, for crying out loud. Injuries just happen sometimes. Right now, I can't do anything about my situation - it is what it is, like I always tell clients - and what I need to do is get better. When I'm well enough to run, I'll figure out where I am and see which - if any - of the Pig races I'll be up for, and when I can plan for that marathon.

I am ignoring forums that talk about injuries and recovery because I am not the people that post there, and I need to focus on MY recovery and what my doctor is telling me. I don't need to know that someone ran a marathon 4 weeks after getting a stress fracture or that someone else ran with a stress reaction or that other people were allowed to bike. I am trying to just ignore everything I hear about running at the moment and work on doing what I'm allowed to do.

It won't be an easy journey - heck, this is 10 times harder than training for a marathon was - but I'll get there.

But legs are supposed to work...

In 9 hours, I will hopefully be getting some definite answers to some of the more pressing questions in my life, namely, "Why do I hurt??" And "When won't I hurt??"

I'm trying to be positive. I really hate doctors. I really don't trust doctors. I'm generally very very healthy, so I'm surprised with the amount of bad doctor experiences I've had, but I've had my share.

I'm not even worried the news will be bad. Really, I'm MORE worried that the doc won't know what's going on, that he'll misdiagnose it, or that he'll insist on calling it shin splints. Thing is, it WAS shin splints, but I know what shin splints feel like, and I swear this is no longer it. This basically hurts everywhere but where the shin splints were hurting, and I'm afraid that treating it like shin splints (like I have been doing) will not help, because that is not where it hurts anymore.

Actually, the latest is that my leg feels stiff and unstable, like I'm constantly walking with a peg leg, but one that's not overly sturdy and may slip out from under me. It's not even so much that it hurts, it's more like it just DOESN'T WORK. And that, my friends, is a very frustrating feeling.

A little funny story I forgot to tell, though - the day of my last run, the three miler that left me in agony afterwards, happened to be the husband's poker night. I completely forgot until he was leaving (after he let me take his last 2-year-old hydrocodone, which incidentally, didn't seem to do much). So there I am - unable to take more than three steps without bringing tears to my eyes, crawling to get around because walking is too painful, and starving. No way was I cooking myself dinner, so I ordered pasta from LaRosa's. (This was also when the chiro told me to take in extra fuel!) When I hobbled to the door to greet the delivery guy, my ninja cat took off running down the stairs. So naturally, I made the delivery guy go pick him up and bring him back. :) (Yes, he got a good tip!)

Shooting guns and cooking seem to be decent enough substitutes for the mental escape that running usually provides. Swimming is all right. I used to really like swimming for exercise, but I think that since I've discovered running, swimming is tedious. I like to go fast (well, faster than walking), and swimming - even if you're good at it - is soooo slow. It doesn't help that I seem to go when the water aerobics class is making all manner of waves in the pool, and I swear that trying to swim through old lady waves feels like the pool version of a treadmill, except more futile.

But I'm trying to get better at it because I'm reconsidering my one-time goal of getting into triathlons. Why not - at least that way I can still be training for something right now, which helps! The Cinci triathlon is in late July, and the sprint tri is 400m swim/12 mile bike/3.1 run. That really doesn't sound like a lot on paper....but holy crap. I biked 10 miles today and my legs felt like jello. I can't imagine running after that....yet! Right now I'm swimming 400 in 11-12 minutes, which is still faster than some of the slowest swim times posted in the tri last year, but it's still pretty slow. A friend is going to give me some pointers, though. And I'm going to see if getting a decent race bike - used, maybe - is financially doable even with the money pit I'm walking on right now. A boys' mountain bike that was $40 on craigslist will get me around, but it's not a racing bike. I'd love to see how fast I am on a bike that's made to go fast.

Biking outside, btw, is and probably will be the closest substitute to running that I've found, at least in terms of cardio+fresh air+making me feel happy.

AND, this morning before my ride, I caught sight of the poor neglected arm warmers I hadn't had a chance to try out, and decided to break them in. Love them. Warm and comfy (even though I could've used an extra layer, biking is way colder than running) and cute! Look how cute!! (Ignore the bedhead. I didn't even comb my hair because I was about to plunk a helmet on it.)

Rockin' the training group tshirt - note the flying pig - and the pink road id too!

recovery

No limp!! I'm still very aware of my lower right leg, but once I started moving around the apartment this morning, I realized that I'm no longer dragging that leg and - I think - I'm walking more like a normal upright human!

So of course, my immediate first thought is, "Maybe I can run now!" No, I'm not going to! But I'm sooo anxious to get back to it, and I promise I'm going to temper myself, but I think it's going to be REALLY hard to resist the urge to absolutely take off as soon as I'm pain-free.

I also had the fleeting thought of walking the half tomorrow, so that my registration fee doesn't go to complete waste....but that would be pointless and do more harm than good. 13.1 miles of hilly walking? Nah.

I was going to go to the gym this morning but I couldn't convince myself. Ugh - I sooo dread repetitive exercises and glaring fluorescent lights, even though it wasn't that hateful the other day when I went. It should be easier during the week, if I go before or after work.

I'm down 5 lbs, probably because (a) again, I don't eat as much when I'm stressed; (b) the marathon training constant hunger has worn off, and (c) we need to go to the grocery store soooo badly. And both of us hate going. I'm having Panera for lunch. Don't worry, I'm not starving myself.

I hope beyond hope that things go well Wednesday with the doc. Maybe if I'm walking better, he'll have a more definitive idea of when I can get back to running, and I can plan future races. Again, I can be happy with the Pig half. Even the Pig 10k wouldn't be the total end of the world, although I'd grumble about having to resort to that.

The thing I don't like is that I'm having trouble finding alternate marathons, if I can't do the Pig. Go figure, the midwest doesn't host a lot of summer marathons. Gee, I wonder why, considering that 90% humidity is pretty much the norm? Traveling too far would cost more money on top of what I'm already spending in this process, not to mention that the husband doesn't have tons of vacation time available. The one in IN/OH is a trail race, and I'm not going there. The Sunburst Marathon in South Bend may be doable - just a 5 hour drive, and flattish, and ends on the Notre Dame 50 yard line - but it's a mere month after the Pig. I hope that could work.

Then again, I still have (a little) hope that I could rally enough to complete the Full Pig. It will NOT be as pretty as it would have been otherwise, but if I'm allowed to test out the running waters soon, I can feel out how realistic that may be. I mean, if my husband can complete a 13.1 with no training (and his longest run ever, of 5 miles, being 3 months prior), I can maybe squeeze out a 26.2 in a month and a week as long as the doc says I can run....right?? :)