Sore...throat that is

After two days of presenting at a trade show I figured my voice would be a bit on the tired side. But then I woke up yesterday morning with a pretty bad sore throat. This morning I can barely swallow.  I think I have strep...ugh. I'm going to head to the doctor and hopefully they can get my all doped up so that I can get all my work stuff done for the week and enjoy the weekend at the lake.

Last night I was bound and determined to exercise since I didn't on Tuesday night after the closing of the show.  Instead of doing a speed workout I did a tempo run. Not going to lie it was hard. Breathing hurt and my ears were ringing.  I pushed through though.

Time: 37:35  Distance: 4 miles  Avg. Pace: 9:24 min/miles

Orthotics. They're not just for old people.

Yesterday I got fit for my customized orthotics. I cannot wait until they're ready!  Bob, the owner of my physical therapy practice worked with me to determine what I needed. He had me run on the dreadmill for a few minutes to see my gait in my running shoes. Then he had me lay on my stomach so that he can play with my sweaty feet. He said mine were nothing compared to the ones he used to work on while he was with the CU athletic department.  He drew on my a little bit and was happy to see that my feet line up with with my calf.  My problem is that my foot is just deformed.  Haha. Not really but it isn't shaped quite right for it to land in line with the rest of my body while I run...or even walk.

My new orthotics will add some padding under my toes on the rightside of my right foot as well as some support near the back of my arch. He said that he is confident that having these orthotics will help me run pain-free.  That was music to my ears! He was also nice enough to temporarily adjust my shoe to hold me over until the orthotics come in.

After the gait analysis and fitting it was time for my weekly PT session. It was the first session in a long time that I almost teared up doing therapy.  My tendons and shins have all sorts of knots and build-up. Every time Ryan hit certain spots on my ankle and shin my entire leg started shaking it hurt so bad.  Needless to say I was not going to be running last night. I'm hoping to get in a good run this weekend. I'm still super sore from PT yesterday and meeting Tawsha for a cocktail tonight so I think I'm taking the night off. It's about time, I haven't taken a day off since last week some time.

Oh and it looks like Josh may have gotten pink-eye. Flashback to preschool right?

Being Still is Hard

So is waiting. Yesterday morning I had my MRI on my ankle. I haven’t ever had one before so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. All I knew was that I couldn’t have any metal below my hips which was no problem. They laid me on the bed and packed my foot in. They were also nice enough to put a blanket and headphones with XM radio on me. They said the machine was loud and they were not kidding! Man the noises it made were so loud it made the entire bed vibrate. I was totally paranoid I would ruin the pictures because they said even the slightest movement can skew them.

About 15 minutes in my legs began twitching of course. I was focusing so hard on holding still I’m pretty sure I could have made myself levitate with the same power of thought. The entire thing took about a half hour. They handed me a disk of images and sent me on my way. The orthopedic surgeon should have received them yesterday. Now I just have to wait. I tried looking at them to see if I could tell what was wrong, but of course everything looks all jacked up to me. I assume I won’t hear from the doctor until Monday afternoon sometime. I’m trying to be patient.

My ankle is sore from my PT rubbing on Wednesday. It hurt so good that it bruised me a little bit. I got all set up to meet with the owner of my PT practice. He’s going to do a gait analysis and get me fitted for custom orthotics. $200 ouch! So worth the money if they help me prevent future injuries.

I’m starting to think about my training plan for the Denver Marathon. I think I’m going to have it start 4th of July weekend. I should have my orthotics by then and with several weeks of PT under my belt, fingers crossed, I’ll be ready to run my little heart out. That is pending the MRI indicates it was only tendonitis.

I’m ready for a super busy weekend after two weeks straight of work. Tomorrow Ryan and Claire are having a party for the World Cup and my friend Maegan is getting married. It’s going to be a fun day! Sunday Josh and I are doing an Indian cooking class which is a fundraiser for LLS. I’m excited. I love love love Indian food. At least I have distractions while I’m waiting for the doc to call.

I'm 26, are you sure?

Well it’s been 26 years since my terrified parents became my mom and dad. Contray to what my mom may say, I was not a beautiful newborn.  Yeah that's me with the conehead.  Luckily it is now normally shaped and I have hair.

I cannot believe I turned 26 today. I am officially at an age that, even at 22, I thought was old. Now I’m not saying I’m old, because I mean come, 26 isn’t even close to the midpoint of my life. I just cannot believe that I'm not officially closer to 30 than I am to 20.  How did the time fly by so fast?  I swear I was just graduating from high school like five minutes ago.  Even more strange, I feel like my parents just turned 26 not that long ago. In fact, when my stepmom Liz started dating my dad Lmost 18 years ago, she was 26.  What a brave woman to take on a man that had a 8 year and 5 year old.  It's just crazy scary to think that at my age my parents had kids in elementary school. 

My mid-twenties, yes Josh I’m still in my mid-twenties, have been awesome so far:

Age 24-Married my lobster
Age 25-Ran my first marathon and went on an amazing trip to Italy
Age 26-????-We'll see what the year brings.

What I do know is that I’m just a super lucky girl woman. I have wonderful friends and family. I even have wonderful coworkers, case in point, Lisa who brought me this delicious and super cute cake for my birthday. (Thank you one last time!) Nothing better than the smell of cake in the morning when you arrive to your cubicle.

This year is going to be great I know it! How could it not be? I’m happy, healthy (well almost), I have a job, a house, a wonderful, loving husband and dog. Bonus-I get to go on another fabulous European adventure to Paris and London in September, two races already scheduled (hopefully I’ll be able to do them), and all sorts of surprises that are going to pop up. Yeah, it’s going to be good. ;-)

Thanks for all the love and support!

Josh took me out for an amazing dinner at this tiny little restaurant called Praha.  It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time.  I had the Pepper Steak "Galleria". So delicious and beautifully presented. I should have taken a picture but felt silly. Excellent birthday!

P.S. I scheduled my MRI today. I know I wasn't going to do it, but I tried to run again last night...no dice.  It hurt bad.  I have PT on Wednesday and I'm going to order custom orthodics.  MRI is scheduled for first thing on Thursday morning...booo.

So the problem is what?

I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved right now.  My appointment with the orthopedic surgeon was kind of a let down.  I went for x-rays which apparently showed nothing. The doctor told me that he's leaning toward just really bad tendonitis but is scheduling me for a MRI to double check.  The MRI will confirm or deny tendonitis or a stress fracture.

I guess I'm happy that it's not stress fracture but I'm super frustrated.  I just want to know what's wrong with me so that I can fix it and get back into training.  I suppose the MRI will do that.  From there if it's just tendonitis I'll do some heavy duty physical therapy complete will some nasty deep tissue work.  Better than a boot.  I am seriously starting to think that this is all in my head. 

I also found out that apparently my knees are weird. Not the doctors words of course. My knee caps track up and out rather than just straight up and down.  I need to be aware of potential injury and really take care of them.

So now I just wait. This is the last week of the yoga challenge.  I've done 17 classes, it will be 18 after the class I do tonight.  If I got to every class for the rest of the month I'll hit my 25 classes.  Not so shabby.

Just Not My Day

I'm not having the best day.  I woke up about 3:45 this morning with a stomach ache. I though that it was probably just from being hot or hungry so I got up and went to the 5 am yoga class.  Bad idea.  I had to leave the room early for fear of vomiting.  I got showered and dressed, still feeling like total crap.  I walked out to my car and something seemed a bit off. I walked to the passenger side to discover that my window had been broken out.  A rock had be thrown through the window so hard that it totally shattered my window and hit the opposite door, knocking off the light cover.  Seriously?  At this point I started tearing up. I already felt like total ass and now this.  UGH!

At this point I decided that I need to let Pete and Lisa know I was going to stay home.  I almost tossed my cookies right there in the parking lot.  I picked the glass off of my seat and drove home.  I still haven't cleaned it up yet.  I just got off the phone with the police department. They informed me that there have been 20 Honda Accords stolen lately and the 1997 is the preffered model.  Flipping fantastic.  She said to take every precaution.  Well duh, I already lock the doors and park in crowded places.  Short of never leaving the garage, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.  I guess it's good that the car wasn't stolen.  There is my positive spin on the situation.

Oh yeah and PT yesterday, also bad news.  They referred me to an orthopedic surgeon.  Now not to worry, it doesn't seem that I'll need surgery on my ankle, but they are almost positive I have a stress fracture.  I have an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday.  First I'll have to get x-rays.  If they do see the stress fracture, I'll have to wear a boot.  Booooo.  I was given a range from anywhere in between 3 weeks and 8 weeks.  That would mean I'd basically be limited to the pool for exercise which is just a total bummer.  It could be worse, I'm not fighting for my life like Jason.  Who by the way, is making some really positive progress but is not out of the woods yet. 

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Until then I'm resting, trying not to get pukey and cuddling with Lucky.

The Panic Sets In

After my long run failure yesterday of course I could not stop worrying about next weekend's run and the race to follow.  My ankle is killing me and my right knee hurts. Of course I iced and took some IB Profin, but still hurt.

Here comes 1:30 am and the panic.  I woke up and could not get back to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about how much pain I was in during the Seattle Rock N' Roll Marathon because of my tendonitis.  But it wasn't just the race I was worrying about, it was my last long run next weekend.  I cannot skip it. Yes I've run an 18 miler and a 19 miler, but I just could not mentally get my head around not doing the 21 next weekend.  I've already trained farther than I did last season, but I could not get that voice in my head to shut up.

I layed in bed for about a half hour before I got up, took some IB Profin and headed to the living room. Quick roll on my foam roller and I grabbed the frozen corn out of the freezer to ice my ankle.  I didn't get back to sleep until a little after 4 am.

Needless to say when my alarm went off at 5:45 am, I was not a happy camper.  I called my doctor's office this morning and they are faxing me a referal so that I can go back to my physical therapist.  I cannot wait for my appointment on Wednesday. Even if it doesn't do much it makes me feel better to know that I'm doing what I can to get it before it gets really bad.

I haven't crashed yet or even had any caffiene.  But as I eat my lunch I'm sure the drowsiness will set in and I'll be longing for my bed.  I'm taking tonight off from working out and making sure to R.I.C.E.

I Found Them!

Today I got way too excited about shoes.  No they are  not super cute heels or sandels for the summer, they're running shoes. In fact they are exactly like two other pairs that are in my closet at home but new.  After a lot of searching I finally found a size 9 womens Asic 2140.  Thank you Zappos!  For some reason Asic decided it would be a good idea to discountinue the only running shoes that I can rely on.  You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find them.  I got the very last size 9 pair on Zappos. So excited for their arrival on Friday. Just in time for the longest training run yet this season...eek.

I currently have a pair of their replacement, the 2150, but I swear they are not the same at all.  All weekend I wore my latest retired 2140s around and my ankle started feeling a lot better.  I'm going to blame the ankle pain on the 2150s but will probably keep them around to test them after my ankle has healed and I'm not running on ice anymore. Yep, I think I can say I'm a runner.  These days my closet has more running shoes than heels.  Most of my heels have actually collected a fair amount of dust. Can't wear them during training for fear of repeat tendonitis in the knees and the dreadful calf tightness.  But then again, it seems I'm in a constant state of training right now. 

Enough about the shoes.  I went to the doctor on Friday. Not to worry, just routine check-up.  I go to a family doctor in Fort Collins. Yes, I realize it makes absolutely no sense because I live in Longmont and work in Denver. Here's the thing, it's really hard to find a doctor I like. So since I really like Dr. Abrahamson I figure that I'll haul my ass up to Fort Collins once a year to see him. It helps that he also specializes in sports medicine. After running into my old boss Alan in the lobby, I went back. 

I'm happy to report I've lost 4 of the 6 lbs I had gained travelling and I still have 20/20 vision with both eyes. Each eye by itself...eh.  Dr. Abrahamson wasn't worried about my ankle at all. He said it should be better soon and just keep icing, taping and taking anti-inflammatories.  So everything was fine but just to cover all of our bases he sent me to the lab for some blood tests.  As it turns out, I have a boardline iron deficiency.  The official prescription: eat red meat or chicken thighs three days a week.  I had to chuckle a little bit. 

I'm not sure why, but lately I have just not been into meat. At least a few days a week Josh and I have been having meatless dinners.  I hadn't even really thought about how much I've cutdown on meat intake until I looked at my SparkPeople nutrition diary.  I guess this week instead of making the delicious black bean burgers I had planned, I'll be swinging by the store to pick up some ground beef for real burgers...doctors orders after all.

Back to the grind!