The Streak is Over

And on the 43^rd day, I rested.

The run-streak officially ended after 42 days.  My injured leg just seemed unable to heal under the constant pounding of daily runs, and so I decided to do what I had to do and take a rest.  A full week of rest.

I was completely bummed; borderline depressed, really.  I thought I could do the elliptical, but the pain kicked up then, too.  Maybe it was just annoying pain, but I just couldn’t risk injuring it further.  

Initially, I refused to let this injury bring me down, and I attacked my week off with and appetite for success and thirst for improvement.

Wait… I’m getting confused.  Actually, I attacked the week with an appetite for Chinese food and a thirst for local craft beers.

The week off was extremely unkind.  I have lost my grip on diet and stopped weighing myself and counting calories altogether.  It has completely thrown me off-track.  This isn’t a reset-type thing.  It’s just me, sitting here wondering if I’ll be able to train for my half-marathon in March and whether or not my goals for the NYC Marathon in November are pretty much shot at this point.

Even if I recover my motivation, I’ll be hesitant to push myself over the next few weeks.  Any time I sense a tweak in my leg, I’ll wince and think the worst:  I’ve re-injured it.  Even now I sit at my desk and focus on the leg.  Is that the way it always feels or is that a tiny bit of pain I sense?  I flex my ankle, my calf, rub the shinbone where the stress fracture is… I’m probing for pain.  Is that pain?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  At least I’m not limping, so that’s good.  

I started on the exercise bike this past Monday.  I’ve taken to it well enough and my leg hasn’t seemed to experience any kind of additional pain from it.  

But I haven’t gotten my good diet habits back.  I know because I can’t pass the “leftover sandwiches in the breakroom” test.  There are a lot of meetings held in my office and leftover sandwiches are almost a weekly occurrence.  When I’m in a good mode, I barely even hear the clarion call for feeding time.  It’s in-one-ear and out-the-other and I barely budge from my seat.  But when I’m not in diet mode, I run people over like Marshawn Lynch to get to the sandwich platter.

I know that the only way I'm going to get back into my January form is by getting back into the right frame of mind.  I temporarily lost that frame of mind when I took my week off.  And while I may have gained a few pounds, in retrospect, the week off certainly seems to have helped my leg heal.  And in the short-term, that was the most important thing.  Healing remains the most important thing.  I just have to accept it, slowly increase my exercise load with low-impact cardio and hope that come March 20, I can stand at the starting line of the NYC Half and make it 13.1 miles.  

 

Stressed Out, Plan Fractured

I knew it was a little different than normal pain right from the start.  For one, it was on my shin - not many muscles located on the shin-bone.  It was just nagging at the beginning and didn’t really bother me during the run, but it would tend to get sore after.  After a while, the soreness would usually go away, until one day it didn’t.  

I would wake up and limp to the shower, then limp down the stairs and to the car, and again from my car to my desk.  But when I got to the gym at lunchtime and hit the treadmill, I would hobble for the first quarter-mile or so, and then it would be fine.  Almost like it just needed to warm up.

One hour, two hours later... I’d get up to walk and be limping again, usually with slightly more pain than I had when I got up that morning.

I persevered.  I thought I was being a wimp.  There were so many good things going for me – I had lost a lot of weight, I was significantly improving my pace after just a month of focused training.  This past Monday I ran my fastest 4-miles all year.  I was focused on setting a PR in the upcoming NYC Half on March 20^th.  I wasn’t letting anything get in my way.

Until this.

A Fine January – Being Resolute With Your Resolutions

Well, the numbers are in and I really couldn’t be happier with the start of my year.   Coming off a holiday season that saw me gain 15 pounds while being unable to eclipse the 100-mile/month mark in either November and December, I needed some refocusing.  I made my resolutions and got to work.  January was a resounding success.

I was able to log 175 miles on the month, which was well North of what I thought capable.  I went from struggling to get to my 2^nd belt-notch to easily getting the 3^rd.  My 38” pants went from being somewhat snug, to now being loose.  I’m close to breaking out the 36” pants from my closet for the first time since October.  I cannot possibly over-emphasize the importance of comfortable pants, and being able to fit into the half-dozen or so pairs hanging in my closet should really open up my wardrobe nicely.