New Blog

Since i can no longer run - my running journey blog seemed depressing!!
So i started a new blog simply called - New Journeys.
Hopefully i will have some new journeys, and will be able to have things to blog about!!!

I never did finish my marathon story!!
One year ago today I did finish the St George Marathon. My time was 6:53.
That was 68 minutes slower than i was aiming for. Calve cramps plagued me after mile 8.
 Calve cramps were so severe by mile 16 that i pretty much walked the rest of the way, only 'jogging' when i came to a downhill.
I traveled along with a mother/son combo for  a number of miles, and that was alot of fun!!
When i got to the timed cutoff at mile 23 i was 40 minutes behind my predicted time. It was here that an
older gentleman was commenting how tired and dizzy he was and did not know if he could make it the rest of the way. I offered to walk with him and get him through to the finish line, since my time really did not matter any more.
We walked and talked about life and our adventures for the remaining 3.1 miles, taking out time.
He was a senator from Wyoming, and had a lot of stories to share. It was a wonderful 63 minutes and a great way to finish.
At the finish line, i was overwhelmed to see that a few members of my family had driven down to be there at the finish for me. My son brought his daughter, and she walked across the finish line with me.
Yes, 'walked' because i could not run at all at this time.
It was a great time, and i wouldn't trade finishing a marathon for anything, even with a very poor time.

I realized as i went to my car later that it was 80 degrees and i did not have a drop of sweat on me.
Obviously lack of fluids contributed to my muscle cramping!

After this marathon, i finished a 5k, five days later on my 55th birthday!
Then in January of 2013 a friend and i went to Disneyland and ran the Tinkerbell 1/2 marathon -
yes, in tutu's! That was a lot of fun! Going over at 4:30 am with 15,000 other people, and at least 7,000 of them wearing tutus!!! A great time! But my knee was in alot of pain on this adventure.

In March of 2013, i 'ran' the Phoenix 1/2 marathon - mostly waking due to increased knee pain.
That will probably be my last race.
A doctor appointment confirmed, i do not have any cartilage left in my right knee, and i need a total knee replacement. That is scheduled for january 2014.
In the meantime, i am becoming a cyclist! I have my first event in 2 weeks, so i will try to edit the title of my blog to indicate this.

I started to update this blog a few weeks ago, but i forgot my password and have changed it so many times, i just couldn't get back in to my blog!!!

SO i changed it again today and will update. 8 weeks of training can be summed up in three words:

Injuries = undertrained!!

I made the 2 long runs of 14 miles and with the help of a friend, Cyndie, i also finished the 16 miler. Without Cyndie, that run would have been way less successful.

That was 6 weeks ago. Then the next week on my short runs, my foot hurt so bad i went to the urgent care and had it xrayed. Nothing appeared, but it i was instructed to stay off it for a couple days. That rest did not do very much good, and it continued to hurt. So i went back to my sports med doctor, and he re-xrayed the foot. An inflamed tendon was the cause, the tendon that wraps around the entire forefront of the foot. That was 3 weeks ago. I took some steroids, and 2 weeks ago ran a painful 10 miler.

So next week is the marathon, and when it arrives I will not have run but once for the last 7 weeks. Longest training run, 7 weeks out from the race, was 16 miles.

On this coming Monday i have an appt to get a cortisone shot in my knee and i will discuss for the last time with my doctor whether 26 miles will further injure my foot, or will be ok.

I am ready, with a changed plan of a LOT more walking than i had envisioned last year when i signed up to start the journey for this event. I am so undertrained for what i had hoped for. But i have been spinning my life away and doing cycling on weekends. So i have not been a complete couch potato!!!!

I have a 'strategy' and time frames i hope to reach. But i also have a backup plan, and that is to accept if my journey turns into - just to make the cut off time.

I will never know what i can get accomplished here unless i show up and give it my best effort.

I BAILED on my 1/2 marathon. I did get up at 1:45am, after getting only about 20 minutes sleep, thanks to my neighbors who had a late fireworks party, so i got up, and HOBBLEd to the kitchen and had a cup of coffee, limped back upstairs, stretched out my leg slowly, showered and dressed and could not get that sciatic pain to subside!! I feel soooo defeated about this. But the Olympics are on during this time and NiKE got a commercial that just touches you to the core - finally, they just nailed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsXRj89cWa0&feature=player_embedded

So Sunday, i walked the 7.5 on my marathon training plan - 16:10 pace
Tuesday, a good treadmill run - walked .25, ran a mile, walked 4 min, ran another mile, walked 3 min, and ran another mile - 3 independent miles of all running - 3.5 today in 46 min.

Then today - ta daaaaaah! I feel very good about this. 4 miles - 46 minutes - NO WALKING!!!
With a little reminder from a dailymile friend - Michelle from Georgia - i also did a COLD bath afterwards. She recommended ice bath, but here in Utah, remember our tap water is melted snow pack, so i think that is cold enough.
But i feel good about this, and will try to stay on this journey to Find My Greatness!!

I haven't kept up daily, because it's the same thing - sciatic nerve pain through my leg all nite, and wake up with a stiff achy leg in the morning, looming races on the calendar that i cannot run to train for!!!

I have been sticking to my training schedule although - lightly. Trading cycling and spinning and walking for the running, but still doing the minutes on training days.

But i am still going to do this. The Timpanogas Half is tomorrow, and they increased the cutoff deadline to a time that is a 16 minute pace, Yay! that is at the 7.5 mile mark and i feel i can do this.

Sunday was a 10 mile run/walk. I did a bit more running than on previous long runs, increasing my running intervals to 2 minutes for all of it except the return home which is 2 miles up an incline.

Also calve cramps set in at mile 7 AGAIN!! 

On every longer distance my calves start getting cramps at mile 7. I have been hydrating alot, adding gatorade for electrolytes, added sweet potatoes, and i eat bananas every day. Lots of stretching too.

My doctor did comment that he thinks the cramps start from my sciatic issue, so there's not much i can do for this except the sciatic exercises. Which i do.

I need to leave my house by 3:30am to meet the buses that transport to the start line. I am worried, as always, about GI issues. So i will have to get UP at 1:30, have coffee and hope for the best. I will eat a banana and half a pnut butter topped bagel probably on the drive down there. And hope there are lots of restrooms and really hoping that my calves don't cramp up too bad.

It should be beautiful!!

Yesterday at work a friend of mine gave me an attitude adjustment piece of advice, and coming from her situation, i really took it to heart.
Tracy is known at work as Tracy the Runner. She runs, or used to run, circles around all of us. Miles and marathons.
Well last year she was in a car accident, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely not her fault. But none the less, she was the one injured. Her knee was so damaged she had to have 2 surgeries to repair it. But now it doesn't bend. She takes steroids for the pain, and needs a 3rd surgery, and then she feels she will be able to use it effectively again.

Well at work yesterday i was rubbing my lower back where my sciatic pain starts and Tracy came up and asked if my back was still bothering me. I answered yes, every step i take, and at night it hurts to lay down, front or side or back, and when i roll over the pain wakes me up.
So i said, let me ask you something, if you were in the middle of your scheduled training for your first marathon, 7 weeks having gone by with very little running, and 13 to go, and your goal was to do run/walk intervals, but now you have hardly ran at all and are more than likely going to have to walk the whole thing if you even do it.
What would you do?
Tracy said - "you are like me, i was so frustrated the other day, i just started crying to my husband about how i can't exercise and how fat i am and how it's depressing me. He replied to me, well you can't run but you can do weights and upper body stuff. Michelle, you want to do the whole picture, or nothing. And that isn't getting you to what you want. If it was me, I would change my goal. I would focus on that finish line. That is where you want to be. And if you have to walk to get there, then accept that is where you are now. That is what you can do, and do it."
So i really took this advice to heart, because i can (probably, well in 13 weeks) walk this, and maybe throw in a couple minutes each mile of some slow running, and get to the finish line. That is where i am right now, and i should not throw away this opportunity. i had to register for and run 2 races in St George to get my spot in this marathon. Over 10,000 people are turned away each year in the lottery. Only 7,500 runners are given spots, and this year i am one of those.

So thanks to Tracy, a woman who right now would love to be able to walk 26.2 miles, I am back on the horse.
Today - on schedule - i did 7.7 miles at a 15:00 pace. Running 30 - 60 seconds and then walking 2 - 3 minute recovery intervals in between.
I also think the 1/2 marathon i have signed up for in 3 weeks, has thrown me off  my path.
This 1/2 has a cut off time, i mentioned before. You have to be out of the canyon by 1 hour and 45 minutes, this is the 7.5 mile, and that is a 14 minute pace. When i signed up, i knew i could easily make that cutoff because it is 7.5 miles down hill, down a beautiful canyon! But not now. Today i realized, running downhill makes my leg hurt worse. And i do not think i can maintain a  14 min pace. Next week i will give it another try and see if my leg is better, after my knee gets a cortisone shot tomorrow. But there are still more areas of my leg that protest, my hamstring being my biggest concern.

The St George marathon does have a cut off this year. You must be out of that canyon by 1:00 pm, which is a 6 hour time frame. This cutoff mileage is at mile 23.1, they say a 16 min pace. Since it is the first time they are enforcing a cutoff, they are actually having a pacer for this slowest allowed time.

Anyway, I am off and wogging again!!

This is my new self image...............