23 days and counting

 

I have just now crawled out of my cave of depression for a brief glimpse of sunlight before slipping back under cover of darkness.  My feet hurt… I can’t say any more than that.  And this whole mess just makes me more depressed the more I think about it.  It has been 23 days since I have run, and a whole lot more days since running felt good or wasn’t followed by extreme pain. 

In my depression I have spent a lot of time with good ole Dr. Google where I came across a website called athletes treating athletes.  It is basically a site where athletes can converge and share their different experiences and what has and hasn’t worked for them.  It also contains some very excellent information from athletic trainers that show you how to stretch, roll, and tape various body parts.  This part has been the great and wonderful bit.  I have always read that I should be icing and rolling my feet as well as using tennis balls for massage but what they never pin point is how you do it.  I’m a very visual person and this website has videos and diagrams of how to actually do this mysterious rolling and massage.  Hall-a-freaking-luja!!! 

I have done a few nights of said rolling with a can of frozen cranberries and some tennis ball massage.  Now I am by no means cured but I can tell a difference even if it is a small one.  So I plan on continuing to roll and ice and massage until I can walk without pain.  It is better than my other idea of just cutting my feet off.

Maybe one of these days I will be able to actually run again.  Never though I would say this, but I really miss it.

I’ll just run on my hands

 

Despite a week off from running and any other physical activity my feet still hurt like a mother.  And I go to bed every night thinking about all the things that I would like to do the next day but don’t because “the feet must rest”.  Well this is crap!!!

 

I’m dying to get some exercise, really to run, and feel like I’m at a dead end.  Now I know that 7 days off was not going to miraculously heal my feet and I could then run a sub 4 mile, but I was hoping for an ever so slight improvement.  I guess I’ll try and do a little research before starting something even though what I would like to do is just ignore my feet and run anyway.  Could I use this injury as an excuse for an in ground pool in the backyard?

 

 

My “vacation” is winding down and I an looking for an excuse to not go back at all.  In fact I am contemplating ways to earn a living from home: collecting cans on the highway, selling candy bars door to door, or finding a relative who just won the power ball.  I don’t know, just some ideas I’m kicking around.

 

 

I spent this past weekend at my Mom’s house visiting the fam.  It was a lot of fun.  I wish there were more pictures seeing as some pretty stupid antics happened involving a few bicycles, brown paper bags, and a make shift dance floor in the kitchen.  I hate to leave them (mainly because they feed me well), but they just won't pay you if you don’t go to your job.  So back in the Haute I am.

 

Two more days and it’s back to the grind.

Phyllis is in a better place now.

 

The other evening the girls were is bed, the dishes were done and the house was in a relative state of clean (I can’t enjoy down time unless the house is clean), so I decided to sit down with “Phyllis” and enjoy a good book.  Who is Phyllis you might ask?  Well, Phyllis is my Kindle and she is the best Christmas present that a husband could have even given.  I settled in with Phyllis and a nice hot cup of coffee (Yes coffee in the evening) and much to my horror, she would not turn on.

Panic set in!!!  I started goggling all the troubleshooting that would fix my frozen Phyllis.  Nothing worked so I put her on the charger overnight and started over in the morning with Dr. Goggle trying to revive her poor spirit.  After many failed attempts at resuscitation I went to plan B.  I called Kindle support (Bum bum bum, insert dramatic music).  Of course they spent an hour having me do many of the same things that I had already done, and then “Ali” my Kindle specialist, had me put Phyllis on to charge on the computer instead of the wall. (Side bar: it was funny to hear the tech refer to her as Phyllis as they could see that was her registered name)  She said she would call me back in an hour an a half and we would try one last ditch effort. 

Well after 3 hours (Rude) of waiting on a call (I felt like I was in high school waiting on a boy to call) I decided to call them.  Of course I couldn’t get “Ali” but I did get “Dan”. (They must only hire people with three letter names at Amazon.)  I gave my explanation all over again to Dan and he finished the last ditch effort to try and shock Phyllis to life.  It was at this time that Dan pronounced her dead.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I am now lost and couldn’t possibly pick up an actual book to read.  I have so much to read and it’s all siting there in cyber space taunting me in the form of a frozen Virginia Woolf screensaver.  Amazon was very sorry for my loss and seeing that I have had this Kindle for well over a year it was no longer under warranty.  They could however offer me a REFURBISHED(read=someone else's broke down junk) kindle for $85 in replacement.  Seriously???  Who could replace Phyllis????

 

RIP Phyllis…

I am now going into mourning and a self imposed reading exile until someone can bring Phyllis back to me.

One America 500 Mini Marathon

 

A view from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

 

Despite my extremely poor performance and lack luster finish (and the pain, Dear God the PAIN), I really did enjoy this years Indy Mini.

Happy face before the pain set in.

As always the Expo was packed.  They always place bib pick up in the back of the expo so you are forced to push your way through the crowd to get your bib and of course are distracted by the shinny objects along the way.  Then if you want to leave you must plow back through the crowd and avoid eye contact with vendors who want to rub you down, feel your feet, and sell you the next best thing.  It’s really the perfect set up to get lost for 2 days and never get a single thing accomplished.  I avoid it like the plague, get the packet and get out like I’m on a stealth mission.

View from my corral.  Very similar to crowd at the expo, oh wait, all these people were there at the same time too?

This is the biggest half marathon in the country. Around 35,000 registered and 31,179 people actually finished it.  Me personally I finished 10,721st for the women.  That means I bean exactly 6,064 other people. Boom Baby!!!  Makes not feel so bad about a crap performance.  That is until you look at the winners. George Towett for the men finished in 1:05:08 (4:59 pace) and Lilian Mariita for the women finished in 1:15:23 (5:46 pace).  And I know these are slower times than in the past for winners due to the ungodly heat this year. The men's record is 1:01.54 set in 2002 by Gabriel Muchiri. The women's record was set in 2003 by Albina Ivanova with a time of 1:11.24. That cray!!!!!

Way to go George!!!

 

And lets not forget the Wheelchair division.  These guys and gals can haul some serious butt.  And from where I usually start in the corrals you get to see them coming around the last curve heading for the straight away as we are just getting to the start line.  Hi, I just walked 3 blocks in the time it took you to run a mini marathon on your hands… It always brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.  Last year the wheelchair winner actually stopped to help another participant change a tire on his chair and went on to dominate.  This year the Wheelchair winner was Joshua George in 47:45.  Maybe he could pull me in a wagon next year?

 

Indy really beefed up the aid stations this year due to the heat.  They had 11 total water/Gatorade stations and I saw countless number of ambulances and medic tents parked along the route, unfortunately most of them were in use by people huffing oxygen or sipping OJ to bring up blood sugars.  I made sure to take liquid at every station though that might have been over kill seeing as I felt like a tick about to pop by the finish.  I ran through at least 4 misting station and there was even one woman on the side of the road with her hose helping out. Thank you ma’am!!!

 

My husband said he saw a Taco and The Avengers cross the finish line.  I saw a pack of police officers dressed in full riot get-up.  There were also a brigade of firefighters in their full get-up, of course they go to use their oxygen the whole time.  I even saw someone with a tee-shirt that read “Running with a Recycled Heart” and another that read “I am running with Leukemia, it’s not running me.” 

Many people set up along the race route and “cheer” you on.  And you name is on your bib in really big letters so there is always someone shouting your name and telling you not to give up.  This year seemed to have an abundance of “young” bands.  Some good and some not so good but all of them made me smile. The 10 year olds doing Journey was my favorite!!!

 

There is not much bad I can say for this race.  They have it down pat and I will probably do it again in the future.  Well that is to say if I have feet to run on I will.  Oh, and don’t forget your sunscreen…

 

Anybody got some aloe vera????

The Indy Mini Kicked my Butt

 

And I’m super pumped it’s finally over and I can give my injury proper rest.  I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was pretty bad and I’m really hurting today, but I’m glad I did it but I’m overjoyed that it’s over.   But lets start from the beginning shall we, and you can come with me into my decent into misery.

My sister and her friend drove over from Illinois in the afternoon on Friday and from there we combined all our crap into one car and headed over to Indianapolis.  All the time complaining to each other about how “not ready” we were for this and thinking of excuses to get ourselves out of it.  I planned on faking a seizure at the first medic tent and she decided to hole up in the first port-a-potty along the route and wait for the slacker bus to pick her up.

 

This is us in our corral waiting to be herded into slaughter.  We must have been happy we were about to die!

It was a quick night in the hotel.  We didn’t even really get to enjoy the evening since we are old and need to get to bed by 8 to avoid the arthritis setting in.  Oh, well.  We did manage to get up and to the corral by 7:00 to wait another 30 minutes before we could even walk to the starting line.  This is the biggest half marathon in the country and when I say big I mean 35,000 runners.  But not only that there is a 5K that happens before that.   Then there is a wheelchair and corrals A-Z.  We ended up in R, mostly cause we suck, and we had this guy to tow along.

 

Meet Bryan, we tricked him into thinking we know what we are doing.  All part of the evil scheme.

Not to mention the 30 minutes you walk from your corral to the start line before you can even start running.

 

Instead of following through with our well though out plans to avoid the race we decided maybe we should try to run this shindig.  Our only goal to was to avoid the dreaded slacker bus that will pick you up if you get behind pace.  The three of us started out well but as time wore on the heat really picked up.  I don’t do well in heat but I knew this and had been drinking water like a fish all week and even was a good girl and took water or Gatorade at every pit area. (Awesome race support: they increased their aid stations to 11 because of how hot it was planned to be).  What I should have planned for was my bum foot.

At mile 7 you enter the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and do the next 2.5 miles in there.  If you know anything about a race track it’s that the turns are not flat and most of this trace is a really big loop.  This is where my foot died.  It hurt so incredibly bad to run on the track at that odd angle.  Jen and Bryan took off ahead of me just after getting into the Speedway and I hobbled through the next 2.5 miles.  By mile 10 I could have just sat down and waited for the bus my feet hurt so bad.  And I kept going over in my head how different last year was and how much healthier I was. Suck!!!

Thanks a lot, losers!!!

 

It hurt to run but it hurt even more to walk, so I managed to run scamper hobble the next 3 miles to the finish.  And I think I’ve learned my lesson; don’t run injured, it’s not that fun.

Jen and Bryan finished 10 minutes ahead of me and seemed mildly un-phased by the previous 13.1 miles.  My time pretty much sucked and makes me want to cry, but at least it’s over and I can work on getting better.  According to the Garmin it was 2 hours and 44 minutes I think though the chip time will be more due to some unplanned pit stops by someone I will not name… You know who your are.

 

So for now I’m alive and ready to get better. Race review for the morrow.

Pizza

The girls wanted home made pizza for dinner. Now who's gonna clean up?