Photo Fun

We have so much bare walls in our new place plus we have a lack of new photos of Andy and myself around. So I’ve been working on getting many of them framed and up on the wall. I’ve been searching for cool frames which is difficult. Michael’s had some really unique ones but they get spendy when you include the price of getting the photos enlarged. I went to Salvation Army, Jo Ann’s, and Goodwill and found a few but nothing that was really cool. Fun thing about the project is that I’ve come across a lot of photos I forgot about:

Trout

I love trout. It’s my favorite fish. As a kid, we ate a fair amount of fish. Okay. That’s a lie. We ate a lot of fish: catfish, trout, crappie, blue gill, white bass, black bass,and walleye. But trout has always been my favorite. I love salmon, sturgeon, and tuna but fresh trout is the best! It’s such a delicate delicious flavor. I like my trout on the small side: less than a pound. I like is baked or grilled with minimal seasoning.

Andy loves to catch trout. So we are both happy.

This one was hooked in the eye. Looks painful.

Goodbye Sickness

After being sick for what felt like forever, I am definitely feeling better. There is some congestion but who cares. Now my coworker is feeling bad. Uh oh.

Shem

Bitty

Enter the Sickness

Andy was sick for two weeks. Scary sick. He stopped complaining and for two days didn’t really get off the couch. It scared the $hit out of me. We were days away from our health insurance kicking in and I was praying that he would feel better and not need to go to urgent care. Finally he started feeling better.

Initially I was worried about getting sick but then he felt better and I felt fine. That was deceptive cause now I’m sick. Throat hurts, coughing, and I have no energy to do anything. On the positive side, I have no energy to get out and run in the beautiful weather? Really Ashland? You wait until I’m sick to have the 3 most gorgeous days imaginable? Bastard.

Depression

I’ve been trying to tell myself the strain/injury on my left leg doesn’t matter.That this will extend my running season into October instead of like last year when I raced early then had a summer lag and then ramped back up for October racing. But its not working.

I read Dailymile, Twitter, and all the blogs I subscribe to about racing, training, and great runs with friends all while I am sitting staring out the window. I look at all my gear: hydration packs, running shoes, and my Garmin with such a heavy heart. I want to go outside and run up and down mountains. I want to drag my exhausted self back into my apartment knowing that I worked as hard as I could.

I know I need to get to the gym and use the elliptical or hop on the bike. But I cannot motivate myself to do it. I just keep thinking ‘what’s the point’.

I gotta get out of this funk. Yelling at Andy how he doesn’t understand and feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to solve anything.

Plan B

So I’ve written and published several posts this year about my running. I’ve complained endlessly to Andy about how tough this year has been for me in terms of running. At the beginning of the year, I just couldn’t catch my breathe. I would cough and cough. Maybe it was the cold air? I don’t know. Although it is the beginning of March, I’m frustrated.

Several weeks ago, I started developing weird shin pains on my cranky left leg. I iced, stretched, and eventually bought calf sleeves hoping this would clear it up. The pain subsided for awhile but then returned with a vengeance. I had shooting pains up my shins and my calf was sore pretty much everywhere. So I stopped running. I took a few days off but that didn’t seem to help. I went and got a sports massage. That left my leg very sore and swollen for several days due to the amount of scar tissue and inflammation I had going into the massage. The massage therapist who is an accomplished long distance runner recommended resting for several days after the massage and then slowly easing back into running. He cautioned that I needed to develop a base of walking ten minutes, then running ten, then walking ten, then running ten, etc before going to straight running.

I cross trained on the bike and the elliptical. The pain slowly went away. But the discomfort and tightness didn’t. I started to slowly ease back into running. Some runs were okay most weren’t. The best I got was a few minutes with no discomfort. I knew I was going to have to miss Gorge 50k but felt like I could still make Eugene Marathon and Mt. Hood 50 miler.

I ran last night and had to cut my run short due to leg pain. I won’t make the Eugene Marathon and it isn’t likely that I will make Mt. Hood at the end of July. I’m optimistic not stupid. Okay I’m kinda stupid because I pushed myself on my run last night and have pushed my recovery back.

When my leg started hurting, I was really upset. I called the massage therapist crying. I cried to Andy. I cried to anyone that would listen to me. Running is something I enjoy very much. Not being able to do it means that my weight will probably go up which undoes what I’ve been working on for the last two months. It means that my fitness goes down which stinks as it takes awhile to be able to run hills and run distances. Mostly it means that I won’t have an outlet to relieve stress.

I scheduled an appointment with a Sports Medicine doctor next week. We’ll see what he has to say. My guess is that he says to stop running for a couple of weeks/months. I’m trying to prepare myself for that news. This isn’t a death sentence by any means. Hopefully I will be able to workout on the bike and elliptical in a vain attempt to keep my weight down and fitness up.

There is something wonderful about a training schedule. It tells you what to do, how much, and when. It makes life easier in a way. You focus on training. You examine splits, mileage each week, and evaluate everything from sleep to nutrition. Not having a schedule is weird.

What did I do before I started training for marathons?

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