For the Love of the Run

Buckle your seatbelts folks, this is going to be a long one.

I originally wrote parts of this post awhile back, right after Andrew left. At the time I needed some motivation; a pick me up, if you will.

I need that again. So if you’re looking for a pep talk today, like I am, scroll down to the last couple paragraphs.

I’m not running the Marine Corps Marathon this Sunday. I cancelled my hotel reservation yesterday, and went on my final test run today. The verdict: my stress fracture needs to heal, my hamstring needs to heal.

really i just wanted a picture of my cool running capris

Turns out that two weeks of ‘low mileage running’ doesn’t magically heal stress fractures – not even when you’re running on a treadmill in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Not only that, but the weird compensations my body has been making while I’ve been running long on this tiny crack in my foot has led to an increasingly aggravated right hamstring strain.

I got off the boat this past Sunday excited to run eight miles. I completed them right around that 7:30 pace I’ve been loving lately, yet the last mile I was just waiting for my right hamstring to completely fail me.

It. Hurt.

Limping walking the last quarter mile home, I felt pretty defeated, and was mulling over the pros and cons in my head. I want to run MCM. I had made it to the LAST WEEK of training, gotten up at 5 AM on weekends to run, spent too much money on physical therapy.

I had put in the time, the money, hundreds of miles, and so much freaking energy. The sweat and tears. And I'm just not going to see it pay out this year.

so very true, thank you pinterest

I know pain well, he’s actually a friend of mine. I’ve pushed through an array of injuries throughout soccer, volleyball, and now running. And while I promise I'm spitting these words out of my mouth as I say them; ‘this just isn’t the kind of injury that I can push through, and run 26 miles on.’

Call me one of the two P words, that's fine. I'm going to call it being proactive.

At very few points throughout training for this marathon have I felt confident, have I felt excited for what was to come. When I first began training, my body wasn’t at 100% - it was at 85% at best. And I would say since then I’ve dropped to 65% on a good day. And here’s the big it factor for me: I haven’t enjoyed running injured. Almost every run was a careful run, an evaluation. I would strap on my shoes unsure of how my body would respond. Does my foot hurt, how does my knee feel, what is that weird feeling in my hamstring? Is my IT band going to go next? I mean, you can only imagine the absurdity of it,coming from the Queen of Hypochondriacs.

For the love of the run, and for the respect I have for my body, I cannot run 26.2 miles on Sunday. Because even if I were to finish, I would have ran a race far from 100%, and crossed that finish line feeling far from awesome, with an even more battered body than current state. Wondering what my pace/time would have been if I wasn’t injured, and most likely in tears.

Before making the official decision to not run, which was only 100% finalized in my head today, I spoke with three other female runners who are near and dear to my heart, and whom I have massive amounts of respect for as athletes and as women. One was a stellar college track athlete who endured more injuries than anyone ever deserves, another an about to be eight-time marathoner, and the last a recent Kona Ironman finisher, to top the list of her impressive feats.

In short, the unanimous vote was no, don’t. Not worth it.

The most encouraging words from one of the above ladies that have helped me keep my chin up:

"You have improved SO much and made SO many gains throughout these few years. I think it'd be smartest to not race MCM and just CRUSH a spring marathon. Plus, with all the new cycling (and maybe swimming?) you'll be doing while your stress fracture heals, you'll be a rockstar triathlete in no time :) "

A spring marathon may or may not be in the books …. But it was the rockstar triathlete part that made my smile.

Had a BLAST at my first sprint tri

Running has changed my life. It has changed the way I see my body, the way that I treat it. It has strengthened my faith, it has brought awesome people into my life, and ultimately it’s the reason that I started this blog.

Did you know I'm 25? 25 years old. With a whole lot of miles to still run. And I’m just not looking to put myself in a boot these last two months of the year, and be utterly miserable.

Oh I will.

A stress fracture I can work with. I can swim, bike, lift, etc. Maybe even run a jingle bell 5k if I’m feeling good at that point, and progress from there. Breaking my foot at mile 22 and being on the DL through the holidays – that, I don’t have the emotional stability to currently handle. I can't work with that.

Do you know who Ryan Hall is? He’s a U.S Marathoner, a really amazing runner who has accomplished a ton as an athlete as well as a person. Last week he announced that he was pulling out of the New York Marathon.

“A long string of very aggressive training has aggravated my hip and it has not been able to fully calm down, such that I don’t think racing on it is wise. I am very disappointed that I won’t be lining up on November 3rd as I had so looked forward to, but I am refocusing now on getting back to 100% and going after some big goals in 2014. Redemption will have to wait, but it will be all the more sweet.”

It will be all the more sweet. 2014 will be all the more sweet.

If I recall, I made this bold statement back in January that 2013 was going to be epic. I sat down and launched into this flamboyant broadway performance, possibly even fooling myself into thinking that this year was going to flat out wonderful, no issues at all.

There have been a lot of tears this year.

The truth is, I wasn’t bullshitting you. Because as I’ve slowly learned over the past few months, wonderful is not the definition of epic. And while I may have moments between the injuries, the arguments, the hard life events, where I questioned my declaration for this year and the valiant speech that I conjured up back in January, I have never wanted to take it back.

Whatever the definition in the dictionary is for epic, I don't really care. An epic day for a child over in Africa is going to may look a lot different than that of a rich billionaire in L.A. but it's still equally epic, as epic is a word that should never be discounted. You make your own definition for your own epic, I’ll make mine.

Situations change, plans change, people sure as hell change. Life happens. And recently, I have just been having those moments in life where I desperately want to see life - for all it's worth - as beautiful. Even the parts that come with the tears, and the pain. 2013 has been epic, because it has been life-changing, in both good and bad ways. But do you know what? I think it's these hard times, the lonely times, the bad times that I just don't want to be in, that are making it so impactful. Because in the end, it’s changing me, prepping me, and shaping me to be a much stronger person.

There's your pep talk. There's my dramatic announcement, my babbling, and my pep talk to myself. No time to sit around feeling sorry for myself, I've got to figure out my next move.

Cheers - 

Resolved 2013

I love making New Year resolutions.  That probably doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Spare me the cynicism and the rattling off of stats about how many people fail at reaching their resolutions. I don't care, I'm doing it anyway.

Let's start out with my word of the year, an idea that came from Amanda over at Run to the Finish. After some heavy thought over a 6 mile run this afternoon, I decided my word of the year, hands down will be....

Proactive.

The word speaks for itself, and I hope to apply it to my life daily. Being proactive with injury prevention, career advancement, relationship building, etc. etc. etc.

Boom. What's your word of the year?

Now, on to the Rez's.

This has something I've been brainstorming over the course of the past month or so. Some are specific, more in the goal category versus a resolution. Others are vague and leave me room to play with them.

There are four major categories I find to be the biggest areas of need in my life.

1. My heart.

• Love others better, through both words and actions. Strangers, family, friends, and boyfriend. Everyone.
• Serve. Find ways to help, and stop turning my head when the opportunities arise.

2. My body.

• Do more yoga. There's no excuse anymore, it needs to happen. Signing this one in blood.
• Complete a triathlon, of any length.
• Work on limiting sugar, in reasonable amounts. Am I always going to love chocolate?  Yes. Do I need it on a daily basis? Probably not....
• Stop chewing the skin around my nails. It's disgusting and I think Andrew is going to break up with me soon if I don't.

oh that's sexy.

3. My brains.

• Read more. I was an English major and the amount that I currently read is sad.
• Look for more ways to learn. Read more educational articles, look for classes that may interest me, and continue to position myself for career advancements. 
• Save more money. Pretty cut and dry.

4. My soul

• Dance. Dance more, because I love it even if I suck at it. Take dancing classes with Andrew.
• Embrace the morning. I continue to become more and more of a morning person, and I love it. Make that my time, and listen to the silence of it.

I'm resolved to make these things happen. What are some of yours?

Cheers!

2012 in Review

What a year, eh?

I don't know about you, but I'm normally a big advocate of the use of the number ranking system. And if I were to give this year a number from 1-10, I would give it a solid 6.

It was a good year. Not fabulous or mind-blowing by any means, but it was definitely good. Full of adventures, but also full of adjustments and changes. It was hard, but I learned a ton.

Rewinding to a year ago today, I was living back at home in the Chicago suburbs. This blog hadn't even been born yet, and I was trying to save up all my coin to make the move out to the East Coast to reunite with my beau.

That took a solid two months to accomplish, and on Februrary 13th 2012 (just in time for Valentine's Day) I made the move out to the Baltimore are.

I was blessed, so blessed to find a full-time job in just over a month's time.

Simultaneously I was training for the Boston  Marathon, which snuck up on me in mid-April. Andrew, Bri and my friend Meg traveled up the coast to the land of awesomely thick accents and Red Sox fans to watch me plod 26.2 through the beautiful city of Boston in 80-something degree weather.

It was definitely one of my all-time favorite memories. If you ever get the chance to run Boston, do it.

Summer came along shortly after and taught me the true definition of humidity. Holy. Cow. The summer was packed full of beach trips, bachlorette parties and country music.

August gave us a grand finale to my first Maryland summer with two epic events.

1. A week-long getaway to the Colorado mountains... followed by one of my very best friend's wedding in the best city in the world, Chicago.

2. A beach getaway to Deleware with a group of a few of our closest homies over Labor Day weekend.

Shortly after, Andrew and I traveled up to Philadelphia to both run in the Philly Half Marathon. It was Andrew's first half and he absolutely killed it, while I surprised myself with my fastest half marathon to date. We both had a blast and enjoyed our first authentic Philly Cheesesteak on the ride back to Baltimore.

And then, tragedy struck and my IT band started hating on me, hard.

Running/training came to a screeching hault throughout most of the gorgeous, color-filled fall, and my Physical Therapy office quickly became my second home. In the meantime, I learned to love other forms of physical activity such as spin class, weight lifting and even some raquetball.

I'm still working on the yoga.

Andrew and I journeyed back to Illinois to get in some quality family time over Thanksgiving, and basically... here we are. Christmas Break 2012 was a fabulous refreshment for me, and I loved spending time with my family, and my parent's new puppy Jane.... in case you couldn't tell from my past couple posts.

I'm feeling stronger, my IT band has quieted down, and this past Saturday morning I was able to run about 70 minutes without any pain. That makes me so happy.

A lot of things make me happy.

Like being able to spend New Years out here in gorgeous Colorado with my boyfirend and his family.

I'll wrap up by saying, I have this sneaking suspicion that 2013 is going to be amazing. Like absolutely epic. I've been telling a lot of people that lately.

I'm going to make it epic. With the full understanding that now, just because something is hard, challenging or even sucky doesn't necessary equate to the fact that something is bad or sad.

I choose to make 2013 an awesome year. Without looking back.

I hope you do to.

Resolutions to come soon, but in the meantime...

Cheers to a brand new year!!