running down a dream

If I'm being perfectly honest, the main reason I signed up for the stupid 70.3 I'm doing in June despite the fact that I'm not a triathlete is that I needed something to occupy my mind in the spring so I wasn't constantly thinking about how sad I am not to be headed to Boston. And it worked. Until this week when my FB newsfeed is a constant series of posts about Boston weather and tapering and now pics from the expo. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled for my friends that are there. I'm also really sad that I'm not.

 

you're so vain

I had my hip MRI on Monday. I went to this place that does the MRI and then the radiologist reads it right there in an appt after the MRI. So I got to see the MRI. And since I didn't really know what to look at, the main thing I noticed was, "That's a lot of fat on my hips." I've been eating really poorly the last few months. Stress eating, for sure. I need to curb it, and the MRI made that point pretty clearly. That and the fact that my favorite jeans are way too snug.

And fat aside, the MRI was inconclusive. The joint looks fine. There is a shadow in my pelvic bone, but does not appear to be a fracture. There was no inflammation. My back looks strong - lots of cartilage. These are all good things. The bad thing is that I don't know what is causing the hip pain. I didn't have tremendous confidence in the doc that I met with. Mostly he just showed me pictures of other people's knees and visceral fat and told me I should get MRIs to check those things. But I have the MRI cd so if I meet a radiologist who is dying to read it for free, I have it.

I guess I just keep running.

a new plan

I am having a really hard time dealing with my current leg pain and the impact it is having on my running training. I was supposed to run the Virginia Beach full marathon, but it took me 5 months to get up to running 30 mile weeks, so that wasn't going to happen. I switched to the half and soon developed hip pain. It is bad enough that I limp after running. It's not good, whatever it is. I've seen a chiropractor/pt doc and it hasn't gotten better so she thinks I should either see another kind of doc or just go ahead for an MRI. I have an MRI scheduled for March 4. I am certain they are going to find something terrible like bone cancer and a broken hip. Probably a labral tear too. And maybe bursitis to top it off. In the mean time, doc Jenna said to just keep running unless it got worse, which it hasn't, so I keep running.

All this, though, has made training difficult. My May marathon is now out the window, and I'll just hope I can hang in there to complete the half iron. My running buds think I should bag the year, and maybe set a goal race at a shorter distance, focus on getting and staying healthy and maybe get faster at a shorter distance. This is not what I want to do, but they are right. So instead of signing up for the Chicago marathon today, I decided to make the TC 10 mile my fall goal race. And plan to kill a spring 2014 marathon.

This doesn't make me happy, but it is the right thing to do. I hate doing the right thing.

slow progress

My leg is starting to feel a lot better. The last few days have been the first days since May that I haven't felt some level of pain in my leg. Most of the pain I've been feeling is referred pain, feeling it in my ankle, calf, and Achilles, rather than in the shin which is the actual site of the fracture. But al that pain is gone, and I know I'm healing.

This is making me really antsy to get back to running. Up till now, though I've missed running, the pain I was feeling made it clear I couldn't get back out there. I was going a bit crazy this weekend, cheering for a half marathon on Sat and riding my bike around the path with the team on Sunday. Don't worry, I won't do anything stupid. But I'm anxious.

My body is really showing the effects of this injury. I've lost an inch of muscle off my calf and 3/4 inch off my quad in my right leg. When I flex that leg, I can't feel any tone in my calf. It will be a long recovery, but coach assured me I'll come back stronger than when I left. That I'm doing everything right, and come March, I'll be ready to really kill a marathon. In the mean time, I got to try out an Alter G treadmill, which is strange and super cool. I'm (mostly unrealistically) hoping that I get to run a bit on it this week in PT, but I'll just have to see what the doc says. I'll be fine with a walk too. Whatever it takes to get back to form.

Keeping busy swimming and biking. Swimming and biking. Making the best of the cross-training (even though I'm not crossing it with anything right now). I'm going to try to swim 2 miles tomorrow. I'm slow as molasses, but at least I'm keeping active.

let the sun shine

After much pain and not getting better after PT, I made an appt with a sports orthopedic doc two weeks ago. She ordered an MRI and low and behold, I have a stress fracture. I kinda wished I had known about it right after the marathon, so I'd be three weeks further into recovery, but I know now. Stuck in this lovely boot for the time being.

The doc apparently sent me to the Mercedes of orthopedic boot shops, as this bad boy cost me a cool $450. It has a nifty compression pump. But I didn't really feel like shelling out that kind of money for this stupid injury.

I see the doc Monday to check in, and because there was something else funky going on in the bone, I go back for more imaging in a couple weeks.

In the mean time, I've been swimming and biking for the first time in years and years. I'm really out of shape and incredibly slow at both, so it's been a little rough getting into it. I miss my running buddies. I miss running.  I feel tired after biking and swimming, but it isn't the same as a good running workout. Maybe I need more practice at them both before I feel good about a workout. I can't go very far in either yet - the last thing I need is to hurt my shoulder or strain a hamstring. But I'm working on enjoying it.

I'm trying to be positive while I'm laid up with this stress fracture and I've been mostly successful, but I've been in a funk the last couple days. I officially backed out of Ragnar, which is really disappointing. I am also sad that I won't be able to run the ladies half the next weekend. The medal was cute and I wanted to race with the women on the team. I got into the Twin Cities 10 Mile, but probably won't be ready to run that either. I'm getting soft (lost a lot of muscle, replaced with fat) and though it has been stable so far, I'm worried about gaining weight. I'm crabby at the selection of match.com men I seem to be getting paired up with. And though it really needed to be done, I just spent $2500 I don't have to get the bathroom walls replaced and the tile redone, which yeah it looks nice, but I have many other things I'd have rather spent that money on. Yup, throwing myself one hell of a pity party.

Hoping to snap out of it.

hiatus

Day 14 of no running. Twice as long as I've ever gone since I started running in 2003. I'm trying to be ok with my forced hiatus due to the torn calf muscle that, surprisingly, was not made better by running a marathon. Go figure. At least that's what the PT thought it was, though when I saw her just a couple days after the race, my legs were too inflamed to really tell what was wrong. I see her again on Tuesday, and hopefully will know a little more about how long it'll likely be before I'm back.

My current worry is that I'll be out long enough that I won't be able to do Ragnar in August. I really don't want to miss out on that. I have always wanted to do it, and it is looking to be an awesome time. I know, I know, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I couldn't do it. I just haven't ever had an injury like this before and I don't know what to expect.

In the mean time, I'm crawling out of my skin from lack of cardio. I'm aqua-jogging for as long as I can stand it every day (which is 45 minutes so far; after that, I'm cold, pruny, and bored to tears). I'm also doing pilates every day and I'm going to give bodypump a try tomorrow too (minus the lunges). It's better than nothing.

2008 redux

The winter of 2008 wasn't the best. I sprained two fingers falling on the ice, which was mostly just an annoyance. I broke my tailbone the first time I went snowboarding, which was painful for 4 months but mostly just embarrassing to have to carry one of those stupid donuts around to sit on. But the worst was that I got bronchitis and coughed so hard I cracked 5 ribs.

Fast forward...

I get vertigo after I fly. Think Lucille II from "Arrested Development." I discovered this when I was flying to D.C. every couple weeks for a semester during grad school for meetings for a grant I was working on. We would fly to D.C. in the afternoon, head to a dinner meeting, meet all day the next day, and get on a 5 pm flight back to MN. I would spend the entire time in D.C. and several days after the trip feeling nauseated and dizzy. A friend told me she has the same problem, and that she takes a sudafed before she boards and she's set. It's really worked for me.

Until the flight home from Greece. I didn't realize how dizzy I must have been until I took a shower when I got home. I closed my eyes to wash my hair and slip! I crashed into the side of the tub. It really hurt. I woke up the next day and my foot was all bruised from when it slammed into the faucet. My side was killing me but there weren't any bruises, so I figured I had been pretty lucky. But now it's over three weeks later and it isn't any better. I'm still super tender by my ribs and it hurts a lot when I take a deep breath. The fact that my allergies have been awful this week, causing me to sneeze all the time, has only made it worse.

I'm sure I cracked a rib or two (I don't think anything is broken, or it would probably hurt worse). And from my 08 experience, I know there isn't anything that can be done. It just takes 1-3 months to heal. Probably running a marathon isn't the wisest recovery plan. But it hasn't been too bad during or after runs.

I'll be fine, right?