Marathon

2006 in review

Usually I’m not one for year-end reflections and New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve felt a bit introspective lately and I find myself wanting to measure and tally my achievements and accomplishments as well as put forth some goals for the next 12 months. So: The year in review. 2006 has been a year of changes on a personal level, more of them than I can remember in a long time. On the material side of things, we replaced a number of old worn out items with new ones: our bed (12 years), my computer (4-1/2 years), a refrigerator (13 years), the vacuum cleaner (12 years). And we acquired a couple of things we’ve been wanting for a while: a treadmill and a new car. So it’s been a rather expensive year as well. We also joined the local Freecycling group, and we’ve given away a lot of extra stuff that we don’t need or don’t use anymore. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but we also have ordered (and will receive in mid-January) two new office chairs to replace both of our old broken workstation chairs. This was a serious splurge but the way I see it, if we’re going to be sitting in these chairs for 12 hours a day or more (Doc) and have back problems (me), it’s totally worth it to have a good chair. So hello, Herman Miller! 🙂 This year has brought an onslaught of health issues for me. It kind of feels sometimes like I’m just falling apart and I don’t know how to stop it. My migraine headaches have returned after years of dormancy; I tore my rotator cuff; I fell a couple of times (stairs and sidewalk), thankfully not seriously injuring myself but enough […]

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fat and lazy

It’s not that I’ve completely quit trying… but maybe I kind of have. My marathon training has fallen back to April/May levels, if that. Part of it is that I was trying to give my stress-fractured leg a rest for a while, to see if it would maybe magically heal itself over a 4 week period. Part of it is that it really hurt to run. Part of it is that Yvonne, for her own reasons, probably won’t be running the whole thing either. I have realized over the past couple of days that I’ve actually been forgetting about my training. Like, it doesn’t even occur to me anymore to exercise. I had gotten into the habit of almost daily doing a run after work, or in the morning on the weekends, more-or-less happily striving towards my goal. And now it’s not even entering my mental “to-do” list. I hate the feeling of realizing that I’ve forgotten something like that. It’s the same sick feeling I get when I think about one of my worst fears: forgetting to take care of something I’m responsible for, and having it die or other horrible consequences. Plants, animals, children, mortgage, etc. I think I have dreams like that a lot, where I realize that I’m supposed to have been doing something all along. I also feel like my eating habits have been … what is the opposite of “improving”? Yeah, that. I want to get back into a routine now, though. Leg pain or no leg pain, I have to do something. The weather is cooperating and has cooled down nicely (58 right now, I have the windows open and thick socks on), which will make outdoor runs much less painful. Something occurred to me the other day, though, as I was trying […]

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the week’s update

I’ve been working on my other website a lot this week so I haven’t had much time to write. Last week kinda sucked, between feeling downright awful for several days (bad period) and some crazy shit going on at work involving deadlines and last minute changes and having to say no and things maybe not working right and the possibility of a trivia slideshow to be presented in front of 2500 rich people going down in flames (it didn’t, but it was nervewracking getting there) and talking to managers about lessening the craziness of the crazy shit and just generally being extra crabby. It was a bad week for a lot of people that I talked to. Also, I barely ran any at all last week; my leg is still not feeling any better. Now it’s doing this thing where if I put any weight on it, it feels like it’s going to buckle! Good times all around. I’m going to try to get back into it this week, maybe run some on the elliptical machine, which I like better than the treadmill and it feels better on my injury. I got a slew of new freelance work and billed for quite a bit from September. I feel that the projects are coming at a good pace now. Nothing like the craziness of the book project. That should be printed and might deliver this week (thus the reason I was working on my business website; my URL is printed in the credits). We did have a good time out on Saturday night with Kirk, Brittney, and Stan. We ate at a steakhouse and then went to the crazy bowling alley-slash-event and entertainment center. We didn’t do any actual bowling, but played some video games, then went to Steak and Shake […]

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katy’s health watch 2006

I forgot to mention in my last post, for those of you keeping up with Katy’s Health Watch 2006: My rotator cuff injury is almost completely healed. My torn left hamstring is healing… maybe about 50% there. My poison ivy is now just a series of fading reddish-brown dots on my arms, legs, and stomach. Only a few little scabs left. I’ll be rubbing vitamin E oil into my skin for the next few weeks. My stress fracture is still very much fractured. Running makes it feel worse; not running makes it feel better. This has sure been a year for injuries. I’m amazed by the sheer number of things that have gone wrong with me this year. I hope it’s not a sign that the ol’ 34-year-old body is beginning to fall apart.

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down, but not out

I have cut WAY back on my running, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it will give my leg a chance to start healing; bad because there is probably no way that I will be able to complete the half marathon on December 10 without walking a large portion of it. I’m slowly coming around to acceptance of the fact that I’m injured, and staying on my previous training schedule is not only going hamper the healing process, it will undoubtedly make the injury worse. It is so frustrating because I really really wanted to do this crazy impossible thing; I’d set my mind to doing something quite alien to my nature, to challenge and stretch myself, and I was going along so well and making so much progress and I was in the best shape of my entire life and my successes were making me want to become even better… and my overeagerness has screwed me. This week I ran 3 miles on both Sunday and Monday, and about 2 on Tuesday, and I have paid for it in pain. There is no question in my mind now that I have a stress fracture. I took Wednesday and Thursday off completely, and only went to yoga class today. My leg feels much better, better than it has in a long time, after feeling the worst it’s ever felt on Tuesday after my 2 mile run. Had I not fractured it, I would have been running at least 9 miles at a time on the weekends. That’s not going to happen for a while. Yvonne and I think that maybe this is just not our year. I AM STILL GOING TO COMPLETE THE HALF MARATHON ON DECEMBER 10. And I will run across the […]

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mileage dropoff

Today marks two weeks from when I visited the doctor and she told me to cut my training in half. In the past two weeks I have only run a total of 25 miles, whereas if I had not fractured my stupid leg (or whatever I have done to it) I would have run 45.5 miles. So although it appears that I have run a little more than half my normal mileage, I have done no weekend long runs in more than a month. I’m supposed to be up to 7.5 by this weekend, and I haven’t even run as much as 5 miles since August 7. My leg doesn’t really feel all that much better so now I have to decide whether to go back to the doctor or not. She’ll surely send me for a horribly expensive MRI. I KNOW my leg is messed up; do I really need an MRI to confirm that? I think that maybe I should just continue my training to the best of my ability, being sure to listen to what my leg is telling me on any given day. Ice, heat, stretching, and being careful. And completing that fucking half marathon in December even if I have to walk halfway.

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stress fracture update

I went to the doctor last Wednesday for my regular yearly checkup, and I also asked her WTF was going on with my left leg. She said that it seemed like my hamstring was definitely strained, and there is a possibility that I have a stress fracture in my shin. Stress fractures usually don’t show up on X-rays, but she sent me to get my insides photographed anyway (hello, deductible, nice to meet you, thanks for being so high). I am supposed to cut my training in half for two weeks to see if that helps, and it looks like that’s not going to be a problem because my leg is really only letting me do so much before it begins to scream at me to stop. That’s one of the things that I’m slowly learning: how to interpret my body’s signals. Where’s the line between pain and discomfort? How do I tell if I really should stop or if I’m just being a big baby and need to push myself? Anyway, I haven’t heard back about the X-ray results yet. I wonder if maybe she sent me to get them because it’s a prerequisite to having an MRI? Which is what she said I may need if it doesn’t get better and nothing shows up on the X-ray. I don’t think I want to pay for an MRI… they aren’t cheap. Thursday I tried to run after work. I was only going to do 2 to 2.5 miles, half of what I’d normally try to run, but I had to stop after only a mile. Shooting pain was running up my leg from toes to thigh. Yesterday morning, I decided to try again (36 hours off… that should be enough time to heal, right?!). I was able to run […]

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hitting a brick wall

I seem to have hit a brick wall in my marathon training. I got up to 5 miles a couple weeks ago but haven’t been able to top it. I guess part of it is that I went on vacation (although I did run 3 of the 5 days I was out of town, for a total of 8 miles). I am having two separate issues with my left leg, one of which is likely either a bad chronic shin splint, or possibly a stress fracture. The other issue has something to do with my hamstring… I cannot stretch that leg hardly at all (toe touches are nearly impossible), and when I run there is occasional pain that shoots either up from the back of the knee through the thigh, or down to the toes. I don’t know that running is making it any worse, per se, so I’m just trying to stretch it a little bit when I’m warmed up, enough to keep as limber as I can without making it worse. Oh, also, my leg occasionally feels weak as I’m running, like it’s about to buckle. The other thing is, I have had insomnia for a few nights, and I don’t have much of an appetite. My stomach constantly feels like it’s full of butterflies. Don’t know what’s going on there. So, weirdness all around. But like I told a friend, I’m learning to work with the leg pain rather than let it stop me. I was supposed to have run 6 miles last weekend, and didn’t, and still haven’t managed to this week. The most I’ve done is 4.5. I may take it “easy” and just do my 6 mile this weekend rather than 6.5, and basically fall back by a week. Maybe I just need a […]

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