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Showing posts from April, 2010

why hello, new hampshire!

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I'm here!  It's cute!  I can't stop sneezing! The plane gave me a teeny tiny bag of peanuts and a cookie, and I didn't plan well, so I was STARVING by the time I got to Boston.  I was worried about missing the bus, so I didn't grab anything in the airport.  No food = hungry cranky headachy Katie.  Thank GOODNESS for Julie !  Hurrah!  She took me to La Festa , and it was an amazing kind of delicious.  Garlic knots are my new boyfriend ( sorry ). Also, they had several beers I've never see, so the woman at the counter was kind enough to let me try some....in a tiny coffee mug.  How cute is this? Make mine a quadruple. Yes, I'll have another, barkeep. I ended up with something that either had "blackberry" or "blueberry" in the name.  It was yum-tastical. It's man weekend back at the house.  Yikes. This guy doesn't miss me even a little.  Okay, maybe a little. Happy Friday, everyone!

three things thursday

1. My IT band is not cooperating.  (There are the days of our lives....).  I've been running on it, a little, and I haven't had any pain, but plenty of tightness that I would classify as "uncomfortable."  I've added another hunk of core/hip stuff to my workout, so maybe this extra will make that little difference.  Yesterday's walk/run was okay, but I could tell I was about to move from "tight" to "pain" in my last running set.  And I really don't want to walk/run 3 miles (on a treadmill) for the rest of my life. 2. I'm heading to NH today (airplane gods pending) to visit my girl , and I'm super excited!  This trip was originally planned for the weekend DC got 472 feet of snow, so I'm glad to finally be going.  There was something about Ben & Jerry's mentioned as we were planning..... 3. I've been thinking about buying a bike for a while, and now that a few of my friends have purchased one, I'm REALLY t...

mostly wordless wednesday

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one of the worst baseball games I've ever seen live last night,  but there was beer: the pizza I made with wheat flour for the first time: the shoes I'm back in: and the puppy: of course, the puppy:

strong women

Yesterday someone on Dailymile posted an article, something about " myths about weight-lifting ."  I LOVE the picture under myth 1.  Do you think that lifting once a week is going to do that to your body?  There'd be a lot more people walking around in strong-man bikinis if it did.  It takes tons of significant effort to look like a body builder!  But it added to the thoughts I've been having over the past month, as I've added a significant amount of lifting into my routine. Almost without exception, I've done some very light lifting alongside my running.  Even in college, I would hop off the treadmill and hit the major leg muscles, or a few arm exercises with barbells.  I wasn't serious about it, but I included it.  After knee surgery, I added yoga to my running, and I loved how strong my body became from this.  I would leave yoga feeling relaxed and balanced and like I just got my ass handed to me.  And it wasn't a month after I sto...

many monday ramblings

In no particular order.... I've done 3 runs since my cortisone shot/week off fiasco. They've all been walk/runs, with my longest stretch of running around 5 minutes, and fastest pace around 9:20.  I haven't had any sharp pinchy OMG WHAT IS THAT pain in my knee, but I can still tell things are a bit tight.  However, I can tell that the strengthening routine I've been doing for the past month is definitely helping - my legs feel a lot stronger than they maybe ever have.  This morning's run felt pretty good, but I'm still scared and taking it way easy.   Total: 3.1/34:00/avg. pace 10:57 I ran 23 minutes out of 34.  What's funny (to me) is that my first 5K back from foot injury was 33:34, and I ran the whole thing.  Just means my pace is good on the run sections.   My GWPC bib got a PR yesterday.  It's a sad thing that I wasn't there with it, but such is life.  Saturday I was feeling creaky and twingy and didn't want to risk the IT ba...

for most this amazing day

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Otherwise known as, the story of my tattoo. (Go get a vodkatini, this one's long.  Shut up, it's not that early.) I've wanted to get a tattoo for several years.  When I went to Atlantic City for what was probably the best bachelorette party in the history of ever (all male review? check. 9 girls dressed like streetwalkers? check. awful karaoke? check. penis-shaped jewelry? check. puking for 2 days afterwards? check.), I thought about doing it then.  My girls wouldn't let me, which, in hindsight, I'm really happy about.  I wouldn't want this associated with that. Fast forward almost a year.  My marriage is falling apart, I got injured two weeks before Shamrock - which I'd been training for all winter - and couldn't run it AND was in a giant clunky boot with crutches, and was working what was basically the worst job I've ever had - maybe that anyone has ever had.  I decided to go to Albuquerque to visit one of my girls.  I have three bes...

three things thursday

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1. I found this picture somewhere on the internet yesterday and burst out laughing.  This is basically what my body is doing. I wish I could remember where I found it & give credit. 2. I was married, and I'm not anymore.  Tomorrow we finish the final paperwork in transferring the house from both our names to just mine.  It feels weird and final in a way that divorce papers just didn't.  My ex is a good person, things just didn't work out for us, and occasionally I feel sad that things turned out the way they did.  We've both moved on with our lives & are doing well, and I know that deciding to end our marriage was the decision that would make us both the happiest.  This kind of sounds like a celebrity statement of divorce, but it's true.   3. The puppy had his big no-humping operation on Monday, and he's doing fine.  We've been trying to keep him calm and quiet this week, and he's been "helping" me work.   Happy Thursday, every...

cautious optimism

Cautious optimism. Those are the words I used to describe my barely-a-run today everywhere I crowed about it.  Not enough to feel out of the woods by any stretch, but enough for me to lift my head out of this blue funk and peep around at the rest of the world.  I did 2 minutes walking/3 minutes running, 5 times.  The walking was all somewhere in the 14:00 pace, the running was all in the 9:40-10:10 pace.  I ran on a treadmill at the gym, trying to avoid both cantered roads around my house and turns on the track.  At no time did I feel any sharp shooting pain.  However, on the last two sets, I did feel the tiny tug that usually precedes the sharp shooting pain, but I didn't stop or slow down.   Total: 2.1/25:00/avg. pace 11:54 I guess I'll take it, for now.  3 minutes running is not a long time, so I don't think this is a true test of the IT band at this point.  However, this is part of my master-come-back-slowly plan, so that's what ...

I still choose to fight

Today is day 10 since the last time I ran.  And during that run, I fell apart.  Running 2 minutes on/2 minutes off was too much for my IT band.  2 minutes.  As I limped home, I was pissed.  I can't spend the rest of my life only able to run for 2 minutes. I've been depressed the last few weeks.  I feel like I'm never going to be a healthy runner for more than a few weeks or months.  The past two years have been filled with one injury after another, and I'm so tired of my body. Today I'm going to try a short run, and I'm scared.  I'm scared to get back on my feet and find out if I'm healed or not.  I haven't figured out where (street? track? treadmill?) or how long (1 mile? 2 minutes alternating? half mile intervals?) or when (go now?  wait until lunch?  go tonight when the gym will be packed?).  But my IT has felt tight the last few days despite everything I've been doing, and I feel like I've already resigned myself to the d...

an open letter to my IT band (flattery will get you everywhere)

Girl. You look great.  Did you lose weight?  You're just...glowing.  Strong.  Fabulous.  No, seriously, something is different about you.  Wow, those shoes are fantastic!!  Manolos?  And your necklace, it's gorgeous! Are there your brothers and sisters?  What, your children?  Not possible.  All 11 of them?  You don't look a day over 17!  No, really, they're all yours?  They're so well-behaved.  Beautiful little angels.  Which one is going to Harvard?  Oh, that's all right, he'll like Stanford better.   So, where are we on the running, hot stuff?  Mmmm hmmm?  Yeah?  No, your ass looks great.  No, seriously.  You look like a clothes-hanger.  Not everyone can wear white transparent hot pants, but girl, you own it. Like, I KNOW.   Like, no WAY. Seriously?  Like, seriously? So............you think you want to try some running tomorrow?  M...

a relaxing weekend & lifting

I spent this weekend doing very little, which I haven't done in a while. The poet left on Friday for an educational weekend of poker and sticky strippers in Atlantic City, and I promptly motored off to the gym, then to Barnes & Noble to fill out my Stephanie Plum collection.  I spent most of the next two days in bed or on the couch, reading and hanging with the puppy.  I read about 12 books, got to the gym for a few hours every day, and just kind of chilled out. I'm now into 3 weeks of some pretty serious weight lifting and strengthening, and I think I'm starting to feel a difference.  I can make my rock-hard quad pop out of my leg, which is pretty neato.  I'm much closer to "glutes of steel" than "glutes of doughnuts" than I've been in a while, and while I don't know how you measure the strength of your abductors (open a beer bottle?  nope, that's glutes), I can just tell that mine are pretty rockin.  Before all of this insani...

in the doldrums

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When I was little, I loved to read.  I'd read anything I could get my sticky little paws on.  One of my favorite books was "The Phantom Tollbooth."  Milo comes home from school one day and finds a package in his room.  In it is a map and a tollbooth. He drives through and ends up on the road to Expectations.  However, he stops paying attention and ends up in the Doldrums, where there is no color and thinking and laughing are strictly prohibited. This week, I've been in the Doldrums.  I've been sleeping a lot, and not really eating all that much, and not going out except to the gym, and just been feeling kind of blah and down.  What I'd really like to do is hibernate for a week or two, and wake up to a land where everything is better, where I can run and feel alive again.  I had 2 5K's on the schedule for this weekend.  After the past few weeks, I was hoping to walk tonight's, but doc says it's a no go because of the cortisone.  I'm prob...

three things thursday

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oy oy oy. 1. I wish I could reach back to my post-surgery pre-running self and give her a slap.  Turn down that CB bib, come back slowly, and trust me on this one.  Now, I get that this IT band business probably would've flared up anyway, but still.  TURN BACK, TWO-WEEKS-AGO KATIE!  You're going to be really sad and down in a few weeks from not running if you keep this up. 2. I love my ortho.  I'm probably paying for his backup Ferrari at this point.  His take on the IT band is: I suffered for a long time with the last one with no improvement (over 4 years), ended up having a not-very-common surgery to fix it, and healed and responded really well to the surgery.  That means that it's  possible  I won't respond well to the massive amounts of PT, ice, massage, stretching, and strengthening I'm doing right now.  If I do, awesome and great and we really hope that's what happens, but if I don't, we're not gonna fuck around for years trying ...

wordless wednesday

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I took this picture to show off my awesome new dailymile tee. I wish I had known it was the last pain-free run I was going to have.

I feel blue

Sorry, no flip snarkiness today.   Tried another run/walk last night, not a lot of pain in the knee, but the IT band feels like a hot poker down the side of my leg.  And this was after 2 hours of massage release, a roll on the foam, and a bunch of stretching. I couldn't sleep last night worrying about it.  The last time I had IT band problems (on the other side) I spent 4 years in and out of PT - never, at any point, able to run - before my ortho gave up and surgically released it.  I am not strong enough to spend another 4 years struggling with this injury on the other side.  I'm just not.   I've been in self-imposed PT for the past 10 days, and don't see a difference.  As it happens, I have a check-up with my ortho tomorrow for my shoulder, and I'm going to ask him what to do.  He'll probably say keep going with the self-PT, the massage, the foam rolling, the ice, and come back in a couple weeks.  My biggest question is: if my left...

injured? shocking

It probably shouldn't be a huge shock to anyone that I'm injured all the time.  Other than running, I just kind of fall down a lot.  This morning, for example, I fell down the (freshly-painted, yesterday) stairs carrying a glass of chocolate soy milk and a bowl of cereal.  When I ride the recumbent bike at the gym, I regularly bang my knees into the handlebars.  I've got about six bruises currently from this.  A few weeks ago, I was cutting my toenails and cut part of my toe off, so it hurt too much to put shoes on for several days.  As I was writing an email about my toenail stupidity to someone, I bit the inside of my cheek really hard and it started to bleed.   The first time I took my dog for a post-run walk, I decided to call a friend to chat.  As I'm talking, the dog stops to do his business.  I lean over to pick it up with the plastic bag, and the phone falls out of my pocket and smashes into a million pieces on the sidewalk.  I...

yes, I ran, but that's not the point

So, I ran on Friday. I came home Friday night and wrote this whole long post about all the cross-training and strengthening I've been doing all week, and about how I ran, and what I did every little minute of it and how awesome I felt and about watching the 5K and seeing the winners come in and the poet and the running buddy kick ass and how it felt to be on the sidelines for all of that.  And I didn't post it because I wasn't really feeling it, and I'm still not.  So.  Short story: I did a walk/run on Friday, things felt okay but still worn out. I think this break has been good for my head, to kind of reset myself.  When I started training again after a long injury lay-off, I was really careful and scared about every twinge, and then the sun came out and the birds were chirping and I got careless.  I also think I got used to things hurting as I cranked up the milage that I really wasn't ready to handle just yet.  It's partially me wanting to be where I ...

I could do it, you know

Someone asked on Twitter last night: Why do you run? Watching the answers go by was a hugely motiving experience.  It's awesome that running is meaningful in different ways to us all. And then I had this thought.  I could give up, you know.  I'm hurt, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm sad, I could just give up on running.  I've been hurt so many times, I could take this as a sign from the universe to just freakin' knock it off . I could go back to being that 183-lb girl, full of angry discontent, constantly searching but never finding peace.  There are tons of us out there, I'd blend right back in.  It'd be easy.   I know exactly what my life would be like, because I've been there.   I've given up before . I'd wake up and have to try on 4 pairs of pants before I can squeeze up the zip.  Walking downstairs makes me breathe hard.  I'd eat my morning breakfast of diet coke and candy bars before driving the 2 miles to work.  ...

three things thursday

There's really only one thursday thing on my mind. 1. I've decided not to run - anything - at all - on Sunday.  I'll might still go out and cheer on my friends that I know are running, but I'm not going to be lacing up my shoes for this one.  One of my running buddies gave me her CB bib, so I let her know she can give it to someone else.  I'm sure she'll find someone since people are throwing their mommas under the train to run this race.  Pulling out makes my heart kind of heavy, but I think - I know - it's the right decision.  I have a lot of other races planned this spring/summer/fall, and I will miss this one so I don't miss more.

not really wordless wednesday

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This is my dog, his name is Graham. When he came home to live with us, he was very small. He slept a lot. He had never seen snow. He loved opening presents. Preparing for life as a supermodel. This weekend he went to PA with us and spent some time with family. He makes funny faces. He can't think straight when you rub his belly. I can't imagine life without his funny little self.