My First Half Marathon

Months ago I registered for the Deadwood Michelson Trail Half Marathon.  Then I got hurt......  I really didn't plan on actually participating after that but I did want to pick up my t-shirt as I had paid $85 to run in the race and now all I was going to get was a stinking shirt.  So Friday Doug and I drove the hour north to Deadwood to get it.  The place was a buzz with race excitement which was contagious. Then I saw my shirt.  It said "finisher" on it.  Well how the heck could I ever wear it if I didn't actually do the race?  Doug said he wouldn't tell anyone that I didn't do it but I would know.  And then I saw my bib # and it had my name printed on it!  And spelled correctly!!  How cool is that.  So I thought well I'm up to running 5 miles again what's another 7?  (slight brain fart on my part)  And if have to walk some of it I could swallow my pride and do that.  Plus Doug was going back to Sioux City on Sunday and typically I mope around on the days he leaves and the race would be a good distraction. 

One downside of marathons is that they start REALLY EARLY in the morning.  So Sunday came and I had to get up at 4:30.  I'm not sure my body knew that 4:30 came twice a day.  The race didn't start till 8:00 but participants had to be there by 6:15 to catch the shuttle buses to the starting lines.  It was a beautiful morning not too hot and not too cold at the starting line.  There were 2000 participants in the half marathon and 1000 in the full.  And we were running on the gorgeous Michelson trail through the Black Hills.  Couldn't get any better than that.  My goal was to finish at under 3 hours and I had planned to walk some. 

When they have you line up at the starting line they have it marked for you to line up on how fast you think your average miles will be.  As much as I wanted to position myself toward the front I was realistic and went to the back and was in front of the walkers.  Yes that was somewhat humiliating for me being the competitive person I am.  LOL  I quickly got over it as within the first few miles there were MANY people who where ahead of me and were already walking.  OK this was also annoying too.  I mean come on people did you really think you could run 8 minute miles for 13.1 miles???  Did I mention that there were a lot of people who were quite chunky?  Well there were.  Sadly I found inspiration in them.  Or maybe it's being catty but I took one look at them and knew if they could do it I sure as heck could!

At about mile 6 it started getting hot and I needed to think about walking.  I did the next 7 miles mostly running though and am very happy to say I finished the race well under my 3 hour goal at 2 hours 35 minutes!  And I got a big honken medal!!

I'm kind of pumped now to do another half marathon!  I figure my time can only get better.  But I also am pretty sure I dont want to do a full marathon now.  It's not that I wouldn't be physically capable of it if I set my mind to it, it's that I think I would just get bored out of my skull running for 6 hours.  So I think for now I'm going to stick to half marathons and rename my blog if I can.  :)

POST RACE:  New blisters, not sure a toe nail is going to survive and my thighs are quite angry with me. But they'll get over it.  I'm giving them a running va-ca till next week.  Then I'm hitting the trails again.  Happy Running!

ooops its been a while

I cant believe I haven't posted since March!  I swear I wrote something in April but only a few lines showed up.  Oh my goodness so much has happened since then!  I did run the Spring Thaw the first Saturday of April and while it went well as soon as I finished I was in pain.  Well April is my "physicals" month.  Having MS and being a pilot means I have to jump through a LOT of medical hoops to maintain my pilot's license with the FAA.  But I though "hey I'll just bring up this running pain" with my docs and see if there is anything I can do.  I thought for sure my neurologist was a runner because he just looks like one.  Nope he's not and his advice was to go to Peak Performance.  I already buy my shoes from Peak so I stopped by and was told to rest more.  humph  Next stop was my GP doc and "we" decided I probably just needed a shot of cortisone in my hip.  I've had these before for back pain and LOVE them.  They make me all better very quick.  Before I could get the shot I had to have xrays and then an MRI (and we wonder why our insurance rates are so high..). But of all things I did NOT expect was that the radiologist would come back and tell me I had a stress fracture in my hip!!!  WTH????  From "moving"?????  Yep a stress fracture.  Well nothing says you're getting old than that.  I was in shock, disbelieve and now slightly depressed!!  To top it off my GP doc found other issues in my physical requiring of all things me to have my first ever colonoscopy.  At least the bright side of that was I lost some weight in the prep.  But again starting to feel old.  Ironically the colonoscopy showed a couple of small ulcers which the doc thinks were caused by me taking ibuprofen on an empty stomach.  So now I'm also questioning my sanity of wanting to be a runner.  Stress fracture...ulcers....

Now I have to go to an orthopedic doc for the fracture.  Like there was anything he could do for that.  But turns out he wasn't so sure about the fracture and that perhaps it was tendonitis.  Tendonitis = cortisone shot  which I did get right then and there.  Did it help?  Sort of but not as fabulous as when I've had them for my back.  And I was also told to lay off running for a couple of weeks which I did.  When I started back up I noticed I had a slight drop foot action happening in the leg where I got the shot.  Oh great now what!!!!  Luckily have a  few weeks and wearing an ankle weight occasionally it finally went away.

So my final doc visit was my actual flight physical.  You would think by now all my "issues" would have been covered.  Oh no....the vision aint what it used to be.  I barely passed (thanks to some eye chart cheating) and will in the next month or so be looking into vision correction surgery.  Oh goody!

And all this time I'm actually kind of depressed with this hip fracture!  I mean  come on I'm only 43 and I fractured my hip by moving????  But as I had my Oprah moment months ago about doing a marathon I got lucky and had another one!  Come to find out, Kelly Ripa also had a hip fracture from running!  YEA KELLY!  (dont take that the wrong way)  But she's an avid runner and younger than me.  Finding that out got me out of my funk and ready to start running again.

So I've been back on the training bandwagon for about a month.  And I'm very glad to say that its been relatively pain free!  So as much as I hated taking the time off it is what was needed.  That enough for today.  I'll post again soon as I have to write about what I did this weekend.  It was HUGE.