run this amazing day

I have a friend, a good one that I've known since middle school, that posted on the Facebook a few months back looking for a gym buddy after work.  He couldn't find one, so for the last month or so, I've been texting him most afternoons to kick his ass  help him stay motivated.  (Hashtag friendship). At the end of last week, he mentioned that he was going to run a 5K Saturday morning, and that planted a little seed, it woke up a thought in my brain.  I had a really great coffee chat with my friend and trainer and training partner Erin about a month ago when I was trying to sort through all of this.  And she told me, when you feel like you can go out and run a hard 5K, that's when you are ready to start training again . Things have not been magical superstar unicorns everywhere in the two weeks since the last round of prolotherapy.  I ran ten miles and that was great, true, but there were some days when I rode the trainer for such a small amount of time before baili

I flew back to DC to spectate the first race I would be DNS'ing on the year.  I had athletes racing the full and the half, plus one of my closest friends was having a baby shower than weekend so it was great timing for a trip.   I decided that the morning of the race, I would wake up early and run from where I was staying to the Lincoln Memorial which was mile marker 2/3 of the race.  I jogged up the Mount Vernon Trail that I have run so many times in my life, it made for a slightly squishy and emotional little trek.  The first time that I ever ran more than 8 miles was on that trail, I trained for ironman on that trail, I ran with Graham on that trail when he was young & before he got sick, I ran alone and with friends, I still know every crack in the asphalt and every turn.  My heart rate was low and pace was steady and everything was quiet. Something I realized a few weeks ago is that training is part of the way that I take care of myself.  It's time that I spend a

For our fifth wedding anniversary slash Christmas slash we never buy each other presents for holidays anyway so whatever, the poet let me buy bought me a fancy new Garmin. Chop wood and carry water , is how I loosely tied it into our anniversary celebration.  And I'll chalk it up to whatever ironies there are in the world that the day I unboxed it and ran with it for the first time was the last time I would run - or really, exist - without pain, for a while. I've had to deal with some rather unpleasant work stress these last few months on top of everything else that has been going on with my body.  It was about a month ago when I went out one morning for a short & easy run to shake off the dry needling I'd had done the day before.  Within two minutes, my HR was through the roof.  I stopped and adjusted (spat on) my heart rate monitor, then kept jogging as lightly and easily as I could, and after a few more minutes it was in a range I generally only see in the las

I bounced back from the second round of prolotherapy much more quickly than the first.  By the time I was 48 hours out, I was starting to feel okay, although still very sore and fragile around the joint.  I tentatively did a pretty short jog and swim on Wednesday afternoon/evening and both went better than I expected (i.e. I didn't turn around or get out after three minutes).   My hip on that side has been locking up on and off over the last few weeks and with that, I think I am starting to finally understand how the various issues I've had all over my body are related to this central instability.  Nothing near or around my right hip was touched when I had the second round, but the next two days my TFL and piriformis flared up, hard.  I believe that what's happening is that when the joint is particularly unstable, those hip stabilizers are working twice as hard to try and provide stability around the loose joint.  As the week went out and my SI joint started to calm down

I had a second round of prolotherapy done yesterday. Backing up.  The week after the first round was horrible (I'm a walking commercial for this treatment not to mention lifestyle, I know).  I had read plenty of cases where an athlete was treated and then happily back at her life a few days later and that did not happen to me.  I slept like crap the first 3-4 nights because I couldn't lay on my back and I couldn't turn over and I couldn't lay on any one side too long and at some point Graham stretched and poked me in the injection site and I woke the entire house up shrieking.  I don't remember when exactly but at some point I was in so much pain that I stood in the shower letting tears leak out of my face, convinced that I would never swim/bike/run or even walk/stand/sit again.  I spent a lot of time in January trying stay reasonable and calm and not fall off the ledge but failed a couple of times, and that was one. I came through Heather's office & hea

I hate to call this an update, because, well, update  reminds me that I haven't been taking time to be in this space for a while.  Last summer, when everything in life was crazy, I kept on posting because I like the overly-public journal that I've created here with all my babbling and selfies and random quotes over the last six years.  It's become part of how I process; that's the only reason I'm still writing, because it's important to me and not for anyone else.  And I've had an inkling that I wanted to sit down and record what was going on as I've worked through this mess but then there would be another low and I'd be spitting fuck it  to anyone that would listen and suddenly seven weeks has gone by and it's all kind of a blur. January.  As a whole: a wash.  After the first of who-knows-how-many-by-now rounds of aggressive dry needling and yank-thunk, I got the okay to try an easy run.  I think I did forty minutes.  Two or three days later

So, I'm hyper mobile. When I was younger, it was good for a neat party trick.  I can fit my large-for-a-woman fist in my mouth (jaw hyper mobility), tuck my heel behind my head (hip hyper mobility), do a split, and do some of the crazier yoga poses, especially when pre-lubricated with tequila.  The downside to  hyper mobility is that as a triathlete or almost any kind of athlete, we need a certain amount of stiffness, resistance, strength to perform.  My pelvis is hyper mobile and along with that comes a truckload of problems that I believe are the root of nearly every injury I've ever had.  The biggest issue is that my pelvis doesn't like to let my sacrum stay where it is.  Instead, it twists and rotates and as of last week, four times in my life has gotten so completely jammed up that it takes away my ability to train or even walk around, sit, stand, take selfies pain-free.  I believe that what happens - and let's just clear it up now that I am not a doctor and my a