Oh. Em. Gee.

I am now settled in to my third hotel in four days. Here is why I abruptly left hotel #2 this morning:

Dude.

Let's Recap

Yes, I've been gone for FOREVER.  It's been a crazy time in my world.  Here are some highlights:

1. Opening weekend for the Cincinnati Reds.  We were there.  It was fab.  More on that at another time, but suffice it to say I was living up every minute and not so much blogging it.

2. Dave and I are both on travel for work (1000s of miles apart).  The girls are with grandparents.  The night before we left Dave took on story time like the great dad that he is.  Super sweet:

3.  I have been so busy with travel that again...not so much on the blogging.  I just checked out of my hotel on my lunch break today because it was the worst hotel I've ever been in.  The highlights: exhibit a) there was hair in the bed. it didn't belong to me. exhibit b) instead of a counter in the bathroom there was one of those little 3 tier wood shelves that you buy at walmart for like $12. 8 inches of wood shelf is not a great place to set your hair straightener while hot. exhibit c) the train tracks beside the hotel, where the train runs every hour on the hour between midnight and 6 a.m.  Remember, those are just the highlights.  There's more I could tell you if time allowed.

4.  I ran at the crap hotel.  It was on a crap treadmill.  I wanted to take a picture because it was literally the jankiest treadmill I've ever seen, but there was a dude there and I didn't want him to judge me.  Looking back, I should have asked him to take the picture so there would be a picture of me ON the jankiest treadmill ever.  What is wrong with me????  2 miles, 21:44.  Bashed in knee still hurts.  Badly.  Half marathon is only 23 days away.  Worried?  Well, maybe a little.

5.  When I hastily checked out of my crap hotel room and made the run for my new hotel room I left my iphone charger plugged into the wall.  Epic fail.

Friday Randomocities

In honor of not running…and therefore having nothing running related to discuss…here are a few things you never knew you always wanted to know about me:

1.   Prior to a few days ago, I had never tried a Swedish Fish.  I’m sure this has Janae shaking her head in shame and sadness at me.  Lo and behold, I’m at the store and I see this beauty:

So, now I have had Swedish Fish.  If I’m honest, I didn’t really like the fish that much.  However, the fish eggs were really tasty.  And if you put about 10 of them in your mouth at a time they were actually big enough to count as a bite.

2.   Incidentally, I ate the fish eggs while watching Survivor.  I was a little late to the party on this show, but now I LOVE it.  But I also wonder if I’m now the only one still watching it?  Philip (a.k.a. the dude in the pink party panties) is straight up crazy.

3.   Prior to a few days ago, I had never tried Nutella.  I brought the jar with me to work yesterday, along with a sliced up apple, to have as a snack.  Yes, I brought the whole jar.  Never having tried it before I wasn’t sure how much I would need.  Always be prepared people!  Ummmm…I ate half the jar. 

And now I love it like whoa:

4.   Yesterday was Opening Day.  Baseball is kind of a big deal at our house.  We took half a day off from work yesterday to go home and watch the first game of the season…which P.S. was AMAZING!  Tomorrow we are going to our first live game of the season and I have been counting down the days!!!

Source

5.       Did anyone watch Grey’s Anatomy: The Musical last night?  I’m not even sure there are words for that one…  One thing I did like was that the original theme song reappeared (a la Callie).  It was weird how the theme song just disappeared from the show way back when, and frankly I’ve missed it.  Welcome back old friend.

Thoughts on Today's RUN

Running Again

Tonight was my first run since the Great Injury of 2011.  I opted to run on the treaddy in case my knee completely gave out, or my spirit wimped out, or any other possible contingency that I could dream up.  I decided to get on there and just take it easy.  I wanted to run at a roughly 12:00/mile pace, nice and easy, 0% incline, and I intended to stop at the first sign of pain.  I felt much better than I thought I would and didn't really feel any pain until I hit 1 mile.  At that point I thought "why stop at the FIRST sign of pain...that's for WIMPS..." and I kept going.  Until mile 1.15 where I reminded myself that this was my first time out in 16 days and the whole point was to test out my knee function, not wind up back in bed with my leg propped up on pillows.  So, I went on until 1.2 (I like nice even tenths) and then I (very responsibly) stopped.  I ran 1.2 miles in 13:52 with minimal pain. 

I feel confident that if I take it easily and work back up at a reasonable pace that I will be good as new in no time.  I don't seem to have lost too much fitness, my lungs and heart could have kept going.  I actually expected that my first run out would include walk breaks, but it didn't which is great news!  Just have to get the knee conditioned to working out instead of laying down.

Running Scared

There was a degree of fear in the run, twofold:

1. Physical fear: Watching my feet.  Wondering if I would trip and fall again.  Would I step off the side of the treadmill?  Would I re-injure my knee?
2. Mental fear: Was I ready?  Was I still capable of running?  Would I be able to (eventually) hit the pace and distance from before the injury?  I mean, one glance at my recent training log was enough to have me quaking in my Ryka's...

I didn't work out the answers to these tonight, and probably won't until I have several more runs under my belt event-free and confident.

Running Goals Revisited

My half marathon is roughly 5 weeks away.  I was hoping to PR, now I'm hoping to finish without hurting myself.  My new goal is to safely build my training back up, run my half for training purposes, and then have a strong half in June.  The only problem is that I'm not actually registered for a half in June!

So...anyone know of any half marathons within the first two weeks of June that aren't A) sold out, or B) inhumanly hot?  A little heat is okay, too much...not okay.  Flat course and a hotel within walking distance of the start/finish earns you bonus points :-)

P.S. Have you checked out SkinnyRunner's biggest giveaway ever?

Five Things For Friday

Five things I learned from People Magazine today:

1. Constantine Maroulis is apparently still news-worthy?  Who knew?
2. Jennifer Hudson looks A-MAZ-ING!
3. Chris Brown...too much Chris Brown.  Seriously.
4. Brangelina believe in time-outs for discipline.  And they really just live an ordinary life.  I would not have guessed ordinary really.
5. There is a Scream 4.  Which is probably the most shocking thing I learned today.  Apparently I haven't had a very educational day...

And now that I've shared all that nonsense, here's what I really wanted to learn (but not from People Magazine).  Should I give running a try tomorrow?  And how far should I go after a full 2 week layoff?  I'm torn about how much to push.  And still a little in pain.  I don't want to re-hurt myself, but at this point I'm terrified of losing fitness.  My race is only 42 days away.  42 DAYS!  I can't afford to take more time off and I certainly can't afford to lose fitness.  I've already lost time to increase my long run distance to where I want to be pre-race.

I am FREAKING OUT!

Meh, Part 2

Well, my little bit o' positivity from Saturday has come to its merry end.  My left knee is still experiencing tremendous pain.  The longer I'm on it, the worse it hurts.  Yesterday I finally broke down and went to the doctor, where I had x-rays.  I didn't catch everything but some words that stick out are:

"fluid in the joint"

"MRI"

"possibly 3 weeks off or longer"

a.k.a. devastation.

To be fair, I haven't gotten the x-ray results back yet.  But I'm definitely still in pain, I definitely haven't run in 10 days, and I definitely won't be back out there in the foreseeable future.

I miss running!  I miss the endorphins.  The sense of accomplishment.  The weight control even.  I think I've put on 10 pounds in 10 days.  Too much laying around I guess.

Okay, who am I kidding?  Too much of this really:

Keeping my fingers crossed that my x-rays are clean and my pain goes away.  If you have time, send some positivety my way please!  And some Reese's... 

What I've Been Doing

It's been exactly a week since my last run.  It's been almost a week since my last blog post.  In the interest of full disclosure, I've been laying around moping.  And I didn't want to get all down and negative on the blog, because of course the mopey feelings would pass.  And for the most part they have, so let's get down to it.

Here's what I've been doing since injured knees and strep throat have moved into my life.

Eating 10 tons of cookie dough that I made for the specific purpose of being able to eat the dough straight up:

Drinking unbelievable amounts of Hot Chocolate and Milkshakes:

Watching hours and hours of this:



Suzanne Whang was by the far the best host, p.s.



What a week, no?

Today is my scheduled 9 miler and I was (gasp) looking forward to it.  We were going to chart new territory on a brand new paved trail!!  Alas, there will be no long run for me.  In fact, there will be a goose egg for this whole week I'm pretty sure.  I'm still feeling positive though, because today when I got out of bed, I had no pain in my knees.  Now, 30 minutes later that twinge of pain is back.  But I experienced a few minutes of pain free bliss which means I must be on the mend.  And I'm hopeful that I'll be on the roads again in no time. 

Zack, AC, Screech, Suzanne Whang, Sandra Rinomato, Jeff Probst...our time has been special to me, but I think it's about time we all move on.