Bootless!

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:  . . . a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. . . Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3-4.

A time to laugh . . . and a time to weep.  A time to mourn . . . and there is a time to dance.  And there was a time for this law, but not anymore.  See, this is our time to dance.  Ren (Kevin Bacon), FOOTLOOSE  (the original, not the crap-ass remake)

So the good news from the ortho is that I'm boot-less...the bad news is that we still don't know what was/is wrong with my foot.  So let's throw a little Kenny Loggins at it, no?  (Well, apologies to Kenny at least....)

Been working, so hard

I'm punching my card

Five weeks, for what?

Oh tell me what I got...

I got this feeling

That times are holding me down

I'll hit the ceiling

Or else I'll tear up this town...

Not I gotta cut loose, boot less,

Kick off the one left shoe

Please, Louise, end this misery

Jack, get Mack, come on before I crack

Lose these blues, every body cut boot less!

Yeah.  So things like this happen to me.  I get carried away.  Which means that I'm going to need to be serious about SLOWLY (did I say SLOWLY) SLOWLY building up.  There is a time to build, but it will be a long slow time.  I need to remember this is an overuse injury, regardless of what it is, so slowly building up is the only way to do it.  I'm not happy about it - in fact I'm still in a bit of a snit.  But it is what it is and I'm ready to get back to it.  SLOWLY.  Promise.  No really.

I, Volunteer

Research has shown that people who volunteer often live longer. -- Allen Klein

Shouting at people keeps you alive, healthy, young, fresh.  -- Paul Capaldi

Well, given the above quotes, it looks like this weekend might keep me alive, healthy, young, and fresh for longer.  :)  I was a volunteer at a triathlon this weekend - might as well do something while I can't do anything, right?  And I had a ball!  I'm definitely going to volunteer again...it was fun and I got to shout at people, which is something I'm good at and truly enjoy.

That's me and my favorite little triathlete/volunteer/partner in crime.  We got up super early to be at the race site by 5 am, body marked from 5:30 until 7:15 am, shouted directions and encouragement at bike out (above pic) from 7:15 until about 9:30 am, and then worked bike dismount until 11:30 am when we had to leave so little triathlete could go to volleyball.  It was a lot of yelling and a lot of standing - good for the soul, bad for the foot...although that seemed to be short-lived soreness.  Hoping the ortho will clear me this week...to lose the boot.  He already warned me that it's 3 more weeks after that.  Ugh.

Decisions, Decisions

There is no decision that we can make that doesn't come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.  -- Simon Sinek

Well.  I made a decision yesterday.  I hadn't expected to make a decision.  But I did.  So there.  On March 14, 2015, I will be doing the DC Rock and Roll Marathon in, well...duh... Washington DC.

In about 25 weeks...plenty of time for my foot to heel and even do a "couch-to-marathon"-ish type plan from beginning to end.

It wasn't an easy decision; in fact, I kind of agonized and dragged my feet on it for weeks.  Not exactly weeks, because I hadn't even considered the DC R&R until last night, but I had been mulling over Instant Classic, Newport News, Shamrock, maybe even going back to the scene of my first injury at Charlottesville...all of the races had their own pros and cons.  But in the end, DC R&R won out - and in a rush, because they were running a limited-time sale.  Yeah, I'm one of those cheap people that will rush a purchase if there's a sale.  (It ended up not being that great a sale because of the transaction fees to register - jeebus, seriously?  How expensive can it be to process an Internet race registration...but I digress.)

Shamrock 3/15 - pros:  I've done it before, it's fairly flat, all of my tri friends will be in VA Beach that weekend (most of them doing the half mary), free beer & great medals
cons:  EXPENSIVE - expensive to register, expensive to stay (although last year I stayed away from the beach and it wasn't so bad), iffy weather along the shore, beer not as much fun if you have to drive home 2-3 hours...

Newport News 3/22 - pros:  one more week of healing/training, one more week after the half mary I want to do in February, cheaper
cons:  it's a new race & those are usually subject to logistical glitches, I prefer a big race right now and it's unknown how big it will be since it's new (and one week after Shamrock), I'd still have to stay overnight

Instant Classic, 3/14 - pros:  I did the half mary there a few years ago, I wouldn't have to stay overnight, cheap
cons: SMALL SMALL SMALL - I'd be out there alone a lot, it's a trail race so no PR and potential injury, little to no hoopla

Charlottesville, 4/5 - pros:  they've changed the course since I did it last (it was mega hilly), I wouldn't have to stay overnight, reasonably priced
cons:  SMALL, SMALL (not as small as Instant Classic, so only two SMALLs), even with the course change it's still hilly, little to no hoopla

All of this brings me to DC R&R, 3/14...let's do the cons first.
cons:  expensive, I'll have to stay overnight, LOGISTICS of dealing with metro & downtown DC with 25,000 of my closest running friends, not entirely flat, very short cutoff time (5.5 hours...with my marathon PR currently at 5:12)
pros:  they were running a sale through yesterday (which ended up covering just slightly more than the processing fee :( ), it's a race I haven't done before, DC is generally not subject to the same windy weather that VA Beach is...

So you'd think that the cons might outweigh the pros, right?  Yeah.  Probably.  But the thing of it is I love DC. I love the monuments.  I love the neighborhoods (except the sketchy one that Iron Sherpa and I lived in right out of grad school).  I love the tourists.  I love being a tourist there more than I loved living there - but still...  Anyway.  I love to RUN in DC.  When I'm there for conferences, I spend a lot of time out running the various trails or just around the monuments.  When we lived there, I'd run up and down the Mall from my office near the White House.  Seriously.  And that, in the end, is why I will be in DC this March despite the many negatives I can see.  I may hate the logistics and I may be stressed about the time cutoffs, but I will love running the race.

Now What?

Map out your future - but do it in pencil.  The road ahead it as long as you make it.  Make it worth the trip.  -- Jon Bon Jovi

It's easy right now to keep looking back at Louisville with sadness and disappointment.  And the longer this goes on, the easier it is to feel sorry for myself.  I realized that the "Countdown to Louisville" clock is still up on the blog - but instead of marking "anticipation," it is counting days of downtime.  Kind of depressing for me.

I haven't yet found an outlet.  Running especially, and biking to a certain extent, provide me with a place to go with my thoughts.  I run to stay sane.  I run to work through problems.  I run to find creative thoughts.  I run to eat and drink.  I don't just run because it's the third leg of the triathlon, standing between me and the finish (although I know a lot of triathletes that feel that way...for me, it's the swim).  So I'm going a little bit crazy right now.

One thing that is supposed to help is having something to look forward to - so Iron Sherpa and I mapped out a plan for next year.  It's in pencil - in particular because he's still picking his races and since he worked around IMLOU, it's my turn to work around his choices...but that's pretty easy given all the potential races around here.

This is what I'm thinking:

• January - First Day 5K, Frostbike 15K
• February - Half mary (TBD - probably Colonial)
• March - Mary (TBD - probably Newport News)
• April - RTC Sprint Tri?
• May - HIM (Kinetic or Raleigh depending on Iron Sherpa)
• June - Jamestown Oly (if Kinetic, not Raleigh, HIM)
• July - train
• August - General Smallwood Oly
• September - train
• October - IM Maryland!!!  Redemption!!!
• November - OBX Mary (deferred from this fall)
• December - rest

I think it looks like a good, doable plan.  I have plenty of time from when this stupid foot heals up until I need to get into training.  I just need to be patient, keep the faith, and heal well first.  If only it were easy!

Setbacks

I have a tendency, just because I'm an ambitious person, to get impatient with things and want them to be moving faster than they are.  -- Pablo Schreiber

I thought my foot was feeling better.  I was able to kind of walk across a room at home without my boot on and it didn't really hurt much.  I'm starting to think that was just wishful thinking, because yesterday my foot really hurt again.  I'm getting very impatient, especially faced with the prospect of 3 more weeks of hell, er, I mean "rest" after it stops hurting.  I can't even get to the 3 weeks right now...and it's making me crazy, and mean, and depressed, and a little bit psycho.

So what better than to give you a quote from one of my favorite crazy, mean, depressed psychos!  See how I did that there?  :)  Pablo Schreiber!

(photo:  NBC)

Mr. Schreiber, as you may know, is Nick Sobotka from The Wire (which we recently finished binge watching), as well as William Lewis from a continuing arc on Law & Order: SVU a season or two back.  (As an aside, I'll admit that SVU has never been the same since Christopher Meloni left...but the episodes with Lewis & Detective Benson were pretty intense.)

Isn't it sad that my life has devolved to this?  No training means more time to babble about TV.  No wonder I'm growing impatient.

Patience

Patience is not simply the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting.  -- Joyce Meyer

Apparently this stress fracture thing is going to require patience -- something that is in short supply and going quite quickly.  I'm not sure I have the patience necessary to make it through the next 4 weeks or so.  And even though this song rocks, it is unlikely Guns N' Roses will help with my drama.

So - an injury update.  I saw the ortho last Thursday and he said it is probably a stress fracture.  Still a tentative diagnosis, but I feel like he moved the dial from "maybe" to "likely."  But even if it was a soft tissue injury, he said he'd treat it the same way...so no point in doing further diagnostics until 4 more weeks and if it isn't healing.  In the meantime, here's my newest fashion accessory:

I hear all the hottest models are going to wear them at Fall Fashion Week this year.  NOT.  Oddly enough, it is the most comfortable to wear if I have a heeled shoe on my other foot since the bottom of the boot is elevated.  So yeah - one high-heel, one fugly boot.  And I was planning on paying more attention to my appearance this fall (since I got way sucked into Stitchfix).

The boot is for comfort - it's a heck of a lot better than the crutches.  I'm supposed to wear it until it doesn't hurt to walk.  Well...that's where the patience part is wearing thin ALREADY.  The doc said I could row, swim (without kicking), and bike if it didn't hurt.  Well.  Yeah.  Rowing sucks.  I did 30 minutes rowing machine and then lifted weights on Monday- my first day back doing anything.

On Monday we also bought a new road bike for me.  I haven't named her yet - but she's pretty.  She's a 2015 Felt ZW-95.

Even though Iron Sherpa joked that it was a consolation prize to make me feel better for the DNF, the real reason is that the 9-year-old triathlete in my house has outgrown the biggest kid road bike and needs to move to a full-size.  So we're giving her Baby and I get the new one.  Yeah!

Unfortunately, I tried to ride the new bike on the trainer on Tuesday, but that hurt my foot.  Drats.  So biking is out for a little longer.

This morning I went swimming.  The good news is I finally learned to unconsciously kick to keep my body alignment right...but kicking hurts.  So swimming will be a challenge too.  I think I'll try again on Friday but use a pull buoy the whole workout.  Ugh.

OK - I promise.  This is my last whiny post.  Next time I'll have positive things to say about my stupid foot.  Or about something completely unrelated to my foot.  :)