now, and future...

I'm back to running! I did a 5k! Kind of.

I've been coaching a 5k training group called Sit to Fit for about a month and a half now, and today was the 5k everyone has been training for. I've been coaching walkers in the morning group, but a lot of them didn't actually participate in the 5k today, so they had enough walking coaches. I'm getting to the point where I've done a little bit of trial running (not TRAIL as in dirt, but TRIAL as in, hmm, can I run yet?) and I was feeling awesome awesome awesome this morning. And, for the first time, I did the hop test and I could hop on the bad leg. So I volunteered to coach run/walkers and ended up one on one with a girl from the group who was doing her first 5k.

We completed the 5k in about 40 minutes, doing a 1:1 walk/run ratio. It felt great...for two miles. It hurt for the last mile. The last mile was downhill. I remembered too late that when I was coming back from a stress reaction last year, I was put on restriction from running on hills and, oops, that was a really hilly course.

My leg is complaining now, but I don't think it's anything horrible. Husband even said I'm still walking better in the aftermath than I have been in a while. For a while, though, I think I need to stick to finding flat places to train. I don't have any really hilly races on the horizon, so it's probably safer to run on flatlands and try to stay uninjured until the ironman. What sucks about that is my neighborhood is a mess of hills with nary a flat spot to be found, unless I want to run .1 mile loops around the cul-de-sac. Time to venture out.

Next week is Tri for Joe. I'm going to try a little more running this week and see if I would be up to attempting a (flat) 5k. I know I'm going to want to beat my time from last year and I KNOW that if I do the run part of the tri, I'm going to be very tempted to push it, which will be different from today. So I'm seriously considering downgrading to aquabike. Luckily, that can be a last-minute decision. And luckily, the TFJ course is flat IF I run it. If.

But I've signed up for a couple of things and I think I have some cool stuff on the horizon to look forward to. Here are my current plans:

June 10 - Ride Cincinnati (metric century that I did last year)
June 30 - Hyde Park Blast 4 miler (maybe signing up, husband is doing this)
July 7 - Muncie 70.3 (Not signing up just yet but I hope beyond hope that I'll be back to being unbroken and able to run 13.1!!)
July 21 - Color Me Rad 5k!! So stoked about doing a color run and I have some friends to run it with! The Great Ohio River Swim is also this day. I may do it just for the heck of it.
August 11 - My birthday AND the Newtown 5k (that I run every year) AND Mudathlon!! I'm trying to get a crazy Mudathlon team together!
August 19 - Little Miami Half
September 10 - Umm, hello? IRONMAN TIME!!
September 16 - Air Force Full Marathon. I'm officially signed up, because I lost my freaking mind.

Oh, and there's other stuff. I'd love to sneak in another short distance tri, one that I could do uninjured. I'd love to do another fall standalone marathon but I really really need to see how I'm feeling.

I'd love to do lots of stuff. If only my body didn't put such limits on it. :)