Spring update (I'm still alive) FORGOT TO SUBMIT

I went in to start writing another post today and saw that I never published this one from the middle of May! I wonder why? Oh well, here goes without a re-read! I hope it's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors...

Apparently I only write blog posts twice a year. Sorry about that.

After my fall racing season wrapped up with the Turkey Trot (disaster), I promptly took a break from caring about running to instead care about my new baby boy, Sam. He was born the first week of December and I didn't care about running for a while. By the end of the month, Sam was already sleeping well and I was running 4-6 days a week, usually in the low 40 mpw range. January, February, and March continued to trend in the same direction... if it was cold or rainy or I didn't get much sleep, I didn't run and I didn't worry about it too much. My 5am training group was all in the same boat, as Matt had his second baby a few days before we did and Alec's only child continued to give ours a run for their money. But we saw light on the other side of the tunnel and decided to sign up for the Richmond Marathon in November. So that is happening.

April came around and things were looking up. I managed to run several days in a row without having to take a day off due to weather and better sleep and generally starting to care again. As my mileage crept into the 50s and almost 60s, so too did a pain in my left leg. It stated with my plantar fascia and my calf, which I tried to take care of, but soon it moved up to my hip, hamstring, quad, and groin. I called Mark to update him but said I was just going to try to treat it and I wasn't ready to go to the doctor or anything. But it started to feel like I should cut my leg off. After an amazing 24 days in a row of running, I took a day off.

One day turned into 5. I got the itch to go again one day while everyone else in the house was asleep and went out for a slow 20 minute jog. Worst decision of my life. Everything hurt the entire time. At no point did the pain subside. I called Mark and told him I'd like to get in to see Bob Wilder. Bob didn't find any stress fracture but did think that it was time to correct my leg length imbalance and some other problems that generally stem from me being weak as hell in my core and just un-athletic on a whole. I scheduled a distant PT appointment with Eric Magrum and retreated to the "rest and recovery" phase I'd already been going through.

Two years ago when I got a stress fracture running in the Twenty-Four Bridges Marathon, I know that having an amazing newborn baby at home is what prevented me from spiraling into depression, and that same thing is true now, except that in addition to having an amazing newborn baby, I also have an amazing 2-year old too. There is no time for depression with two kids under three in the house! But I still got very sad when I looked at a calendar of May two days ago and realized that I hadn't run yet this month. I decided it was time.

I went out to my favorite place, Colthurst Farms, to run on the grass loop. Two loops, three miles, overcast sky. It was the hardest thing I've done in a long time. That course is unforgiving. I completed the circuit running just over 8:30 pace. I wore my heart rate monitor and my watch told me that I needed 37 hours to recover from the effort. I felt fat, pale, out of shape, and sore. But I ran, and it didn't hurt as badly as it did on April 30th when I tried 20 minutes around my neighborhood. Maybe grass was key.

After a torturous ice bath that night, I went back to the farm again yesterday. Under a bright, sunny sky, I suffered through a true #suntanrun in a slower pace than the day before, but with no more pain than on Thursday. I limited my icing to my foot last night, and today I only have a tremendous amount of pain in my heal, so I'm calling it progress. I'll take today off and try again tomorrow. Maybe when I show up to my appointment with Eric on Wednesday, I'll have a better outlook on running. I have plenty of time before Richmond and summer mileage is right around the corner.

Scott, I'll try to blog again in less than 7 months so you have something to keep you entertained down in the wilderness. I'm just chalking all this up to being old now.