Friday was the day I went from Injured to Not Injured.  It was the day I pressed Start on the Garmin and braced myself, as I have since the beginning of September, against those initial hurting steps.  But they never came – no twinge, no reminder, it was…odd.  I just ran.  And like that, I knew it was done.  The injury was over.

To give you a frame of reference, this is 4.5 weeks after 4 weeks of no running.  I was naive to assume the time off would leave me totally “fixed” – it fixed the stress reaction but the muscular mess that started 6 weeks prior to that 4-week rest was quite the tenacious beast.

A friend on the forum asked what I’d have done differently and it’s this: if I can’t identify an injury and it’s not better after 3 weeks, I’ll call a doctor or get PT.  For common running injuries, I’ll continue to self-treat as I always have, but there’s only so long you can run through a mystery and expect it to disappear. (disclaimer: 3 weeks is a loose guideline for me alone based upon my injury experiences, not a one-size-fits-all suggestion)

I needn’t explain how monumental it feels to move on.  There was an instant mental change, like a switch turned on in the midst of Friday’s run.  Instead of avoiding all thoughts of training and the future as I’ve had to do, I suddenly began plotting out the coming week, how I could add in a few strides, maybe even some short hill reps on the museum ramps.  Hope and Excitement had returned.

Lastly, there’s an insane amount of relief and release from finally, finally, not having to monitor my leg every waking minute.  No more “does it hurt more or less than before? where does it hurt exactly right now? if I do this will it do that? am I getting better or making it worse?”  I’ve been so sick of living inside that limb, you’ve no idea.

The “Look, I’m A Runner Again!” Week In Review
My paces are still behind but the gap is closing at a reasonable rate.  Mileage-wise, I’ll hit 60 next week and while that doesn’t seem like much compared to my Summer Self, I can appreciate that it’s a solid amount.

Mon: off
Tues: 6
Wed: 7
Thurs: 10
Friday: 6
Sat: 8
Sun: 13
Total: 50 mi

I’m going to hold off on listing paces for each run for a bit longer to avoid any self-inflicted pressure, but I will say my slowest run this week was 9:03, fastest was 8:23.

Star Encounters of the Facebook kind
If you’re a Facebook friend or a 3:20 forum pal, you already saw most of this play out, so you’re allowed to leave the classroom early, but you might enjoy my moment of embarrassing stupidity that I’ve included here.

On Friday after my “I’m Cured!” run, my friend Karah posts on my wall that one of my t-shirt designs, the Chafe one, is on Kara Goucher’s fan page.  This was extremely fabulous news because first off, Kara Goucher!  But also, she has 45,000 fans Liking that page, so mucho exposure.

But when I check out the page and see my design there, my smiley turns into a frowny because there’s no mention of Gifted Runner.  There is, however, a link to the FB page she “shared” it from, Run The Edge, which had posted it earlier in the day. So I added this comment below the update on both pages, “Thank you for posting this! This is my design so check out GiftedRunner.com to see it on shirts and gift items” and included a link to my site.

Now, note that at this point, because I’m not paying attention, I assume Run The Edge is one of those FB pages that post funny running pics for people to repost all over Facebook.  But continuing with the story…

15 minutes after I add my comments/links, I get a very sweet, apologetic Private Message from Adam Goucher himself, telling me he absolutely loves the design and that he’ll repost the image with proper credit and a link to my site.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “Hmmm, I guess he manages Kara’s FB page since he’s the one contacting me”.

In my reply, I gush back a tiny bit and include this, “I don’t blame you at all, it’s Run The Edge that should have credited me since you guys just shared their link, not knowing otherwise.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid!  Because immediately after sending it, I go back to the Run The Edge page and realize…it’s the title of Adam Goucher’s new book.  It’s his page!

So now I’m totally mortified that I’ve not only accused him of being at fault but that I blatantly didn’t recognize his book.  So before he can reply, I pop off another message saying “I’m an ass and didn’t realize you ARE Run The Edge.  Please, let me start over…” and I make some joke about it.

He’s such a cool guy, he thought it was really funny, told me I’m not an ass and that they both really like my stuff.  Whew!  And he did re-add the link as promised, which resulted in a bunch of new newsletter sign-ups which means…time to design again.  Between the run and this, it was quite an eventful Friday, all told.

So that’s it for this time.  Have a great beginning to your week, may your runs be gloriously strong, unexpectedly easy and make you feel like a hundred bucks.  Cheers!

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