I'm Baaack (and better?)

Well, if you notice the dates on my blog you’ll notice that I haven’t posted anything since October 05. That’s a year and a half ago. If you remember, back then I was training for the Sacramento Internationals Marathon. Although I was recovering from a foot injury, I was still pretty optimistic about being able to do 26.2 miles.

So, with just a month or so to go to the race, I went on one of my last big runs. About 18 miles. After the run, my foot felt really funny, but I figured my muscles were just tight. The pain got worse and worse, until I could barely walk. I was literally hobbling everywhere.

So I went back to the doctor, had a bunch of X-rays and doctors poking my feet. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Obviously I was hurt- but they couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The one thing they could tell me was what I already knew- no running.

Obviously you can imagine how disappointed and depressing it was to go from running 18 miles and only weeks away from your first marathon to being able to barely walk. It was a pretty hard time for me emotionally and physically. However, I decided to make the most of it and while I was recovering (from an injury that my doctors still could not identify) I went to the CIM Marathon and cheered on my teammates.

My teammates really inspired me- people I had been running with for months who had not only trained for this event but more importantly had collectively raised a ton of money for cancer research. By the end of the day, I had completely lost my voice from cheering them on and was really sore (probably from jumping up and down in excitement for them).

Most importantly, things were put into perspective. Here I was complaining and feeling sorry for myself because I could not run 26.2 miles. But overall I was a healthy person, able to do most everything else I wanted. Sure, it still hurt to walk and I couldn’t wear flip flops anymore- but it is very hard to complain about those things when my teammates had lost their children, brothers, sisters and/or spouses to Leukemia and other blood related cancers. I knew that once I recovered, I would be able to try the marathon again. My teammates would never get their loved ones back.

After the CIM, I continued to have tests done to see what was wrong with my foot. At one point, my doctor even ran tests to see if it was something really serious (like cancer). Luckily, those tests came back clear. Months later a podiatrist told me that he was pretty sure that one of the small bones in the middle of my feet had popped out of place, and that there wasn’t much I could do but wait for it to work itself back into place. I started seeing a chiropractor who helped a lot. In addition, I got special orthotics for my shoes and eventually had cortisone shots.

So now here I am a year and a half later and a little bit fatter and I have made the decision that I am ready to train again. I joined Team in Training and am slowly working my way back to marathon shape. Right now I am signed up for the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco in October. I have to be careful, I could possible hurt my foot again. If I do, then it will be no more long distance running for me and I’ll go back to triathlons.

So once again, I’ll be posting regular blogs about training and fundraising and life in general. I hope that you’ll be able to support me in my training and that you’ll feel inspired to donate to my fundraising campaign- this year I want to raise $2400. For more info on why I fundraise- check out my honoree page.

Go team!