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...............

Happy 4th of July!!
Did a late in the day cycle with my husband today.
He finally fixed one of our 3 other bikes to ride with me. He chose to try to fix one of our sons' mountain bikes, but the tires were too punctured and when i bought replacement tubes, they were the wrong kind.
So he decided to get out his sacred Schwinn. He bought this bike 40 years ago and swears it is a classic collectors item!!
Well, with air in the tires and WD40 on the gears, it did work ok!
The route he wanted to ride had a bit of a  hill coming home, but he said he would be fine. - Ok, this incline coming home is something we have disagreed upon regularly. I have run up this incline - 150 feet in 1.3 miles, and when it is at the end of your run, it seems pretty steep. Hubs has insisted 'that's not a hill' Well riding in his car it may not seem like a hill, but today, on his bike, it finally seemed like a hill to him!!

When we were starting out and he told me where he wanted to ride, i asked how many gears his trusty Schwinn had. He said '20 something'. I looked over at him and asked 'are you sure? I thought they only made bikes with 10 gears back in the 70's.' He assured me his had over 20.
Well as we were coming up the previously categorized non-hill, he got off his bike and started walking it. I was a ways ahead, and when i noticed he was walking, i turned around and went back and changed into a slow gear and pedaled slow next to him. He looked over and asked, how many gears does your bike have? I replied - 21, but i stay away from the outer edges and only use about 18.
He looked down at his and said, i only have 10.
Well what do you know!!!
But he has decided he is ready to go again, to Jordan Parkway, where there aren't any hills.
So a good day!

I need to catch up!!!
 I have been having TERRIBLE sciatic pain, and when i tried running last week - the only run i have actually done in weeks, it did not turn out well. 4 slow miles on the treadmill, my sciatic nerve hurt with every step, but not my knee or calves or anything else. So i thought all was good.
Then the next morning, i could hardly get out of bed. My knee hurt, my calve had cramping, and my hamstring was very sore, and yes, my sciatic nerve hurt all the way down from my back to  my bottom to my knee. I wore a knee brace all day, ate ibuprofen,  and hobbled around.

I have been doing cycling in the evenings, and once in a while walking, but seriously walking hurts with every step. So my miles have been much shorter than they should be, but now with my ham string.... It is now 5 days after that slow run and it still aches. I walked yesterday 8.5 miles at a pretty slow pace, it ended up taking me 2 1/2 hours which was an 18 minute pace. That is too slow for the half i am signed up for in 4 weeks, and even too slow for the St George Marathon.

For the Timpanogas Half, i have to maintain a 14 minute mile for the first 7.5 miles, they close the road at the 7.5 mile point to runners after 1 hour and 45 minutes after the start. You would think since it is downhill, that would be easy, but downhill hurts everything in my leg right now. St George marathon also has a cutoff at the 23 mile mark  at 6 hours - a 16:00 minute pace.
I go in to the doctor a week from today and get a cortisone shot in my knee, that will be one spot that will be less painful. Then we will discuss the next thing to try for my sciatic nerve. The cortiroids he put me on for the inflammation, did absolutely nothing for the sciatica.

I do not want to walk the marathon in October, the whole thing anyway, that is not my plan and would be nothing but a big disappointment if that is where i am at that point. I have 13 weeks to get moving and get the miles in. Even walking 8.6 yesterday made my legs tired.
I have time to try plans for healing, but not much, and I know there are marathons almost all year long - somewhere.
I might eventually need to decide which way to go.
Walking an entire marathon that I had planned to run/walk would be a failure to me. Walking is perfectly fine, if that is your goal. Mine is to be able to do run/walks interval the whole way. And if it gets to the walking only point for this year, i am pretty sure i am going to wait till next year when i can accomplish my goal.
We'll see, and keeping my fingers crossed for less pain!

Today was a walk. Well marathon training plans called for an easy run, but i am just walking till my leg heals. The pain returned during mile 2 and i almost skipped mile 3. But i want to keep up with the mileage so i slowed down a bit and got the 3rd mile done. The temperature was in the low 40's but my hands were cold and even got a little numb until i pulled my sleeves down over them ~ in June!!

Monday Utah was 20 degrees over the average, even set a new record of 98 degrees, and today we are 16 degrees below average - !!

I also called a Sports Medicine MD and made an appointment to get this leg checked out next Monday.I need to be informed about what the problem with it is, if it is really 'injured' and what exercise i should be doing to help it get better, and if my attempts at running are hurting it at all, or just feel painful.

Then tonight i did a 4.5 mile spin for 17 minutes. Spinning does not hurt at all.

Easy morning yoga - Yogamazing Morning Slow Flow  with Chaz. PERFECT!!!
I really need to do this more because i always feel good when i get a low level yoga session done in the morning!

Today was a 10.8 miles spin - 40 minutes. Slower but higher level today. Leg 'burned' when i got up this morning and it pretty much hurt all day, both the injured area along the inside of my right knee, and the back side from my  bottom down through hammie  because of that sciatic nerve! Pretty much did not do a whole lot all day, tried to stay off my feet because the leg hurt with every step.

Today was an attempt at doing more running. I copied Hal Higdon's marathon training program onto the calendar on my ipad and decided to try to keep up with it. The long miles on the weekend are pretty much  the same as they are on John Bingham's program, but the miles during the week are quite different.
The mid week running is 3 days in a row. The first 2 weeks are 3,3,3. I am doing my running days as Wed, Thur, Fri. long runs on Sunday.
After the first 2 weeks, the middle day of the mid week running days, start to be longer than the other 2 days. The longest running for mid week is 5, 10, 5 - that is a lot of running to do before work, but those days don't come until The beginning of September.
Anyway, so today i started Hal Higdon's plan which i thought was a 5 mile run. It is 2.5 from behind my house down to the library, so i decided to go down the hill, running as much as possible, to the library and there turn around and walk back up.
On the way down i did intervals walking anywhere from 3 - 4 minutes and then running from 2 - 4 minutes, with a final burst of 5 minutes at the end of the hill. Then i turned around and started back up. I actually 4 running intervals on the way back up, 2 -4 minutes each, and again a final 5 min stretch at the finish. I was glad to get some running done and for the most part my sore leg felt pretty good.
This afternoon and evening, it is sore and achey again. Hopefully by morning that will subside.
When i logged my mileage onto my ipad calendar, i realized that i was supposed to do 6 today instead of 5. I had planned on doing my last mile later in the day, but my leg started to ache, and my sciatic nerve being pinched really hurt today too, so i let the last mile go.

3 mile walk in the morning. I tried 3 running segments. Two were 30 seconds each and one was 53 seconds. Doesn't seem like much, but i wanted to see if i could tolerate running in the least. These went ok. The good news is that these micro bursts sped up my time and i averaged 16:17 per mile, which is quicker than i have been walking lately.

Spin today - I0 miles in 36 minutes. I wished my spinning worked out more than just my legs because these are easy and convenient!

"'Remember, your worst run is always 100 percent


          better than the person who never tries.'" 

Today was a stiff and painful stupid 2.6 mile Walk!!! My bottom is still sore from my sciatic nerve issue, my leg is quite bit tender, my ego and motivation are really taking a hit. Argghhh. LOTS of runners out today, and you know what, that really depressed me. I am happy for them, but soooo jealous. :(

Spin - 5 miles. Spinning feels great, but a long car ride (4 hours) to a small community college in Western Colorado - CNCC, was not fun. The car ride stiffened up my leg and i had to ease out of the car at every stop and slowly straighten my leg. It also aggravated my sciatic nerve and my back end hurst too!!
So i eased the pain by my usual - over eatting !! ice cream and brownies.
Maybe they allow scooters on the St George Marathon course? ;)

5 mile walk because that is what was on my 'training plan'
Leg felt sore after 4 miles and continued to do so all day.
I am really beginning to rethink my marathon, this leg issue is annoying, but not quitting yet.