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!

I’ve lived here since 2002 and for the most part, I like it a lot.  It’s beautiful, old (Olde), I love my neighborhood but it also has a few annoyances particular to the locale:  Philadelphia has a city tax that eats a shitload of your money (which is why a lot of people live in NJ and commute), the liquor stores are state-run so more expensive (which is why, if you’re smart, you take stealth missions to NJ for booze) and I just found out today, I cannot get an A.R.T session for the same injury without a doctor’s prescription, regardless that I pay completely out of pocket, because I’ve surpassed the 30-day window.

Backtracking a day, yesterday’s run wasn’t awful or painful but it followed a rest day, so I naively expected to be tangibly improved.  Granted, I was tired from a long job and it was windy, but my leg was not magically done and frankly, I’m sick of noticing or thinking about it.  So when I got home, I called the ART lady to finish the thing off.  Appt made for 1pm today.  Cool.

Forward to today, I have a great run: 7 miles, a few around 8:00/mi, feeling the best I have post-injury.  In fact, had this run happened yesterday, I wouldn’t have even made an ART appt.  Still, I’m excited at the prospect because I know that with a little therapeutic mauling, it’ll be over for good.

50 minutes before the appointment, I get a call from the office asking if I’m going in for the original injury.  When I say Yes, she tells me that, due to some stupid law called Direct Access, I can’t have the session without a referral.  Nice.  The therapy place isn’t in my HMO network, and even if it was, doubtful I’d have been able to get it taken care of with less than an hour to the appt.

I’m not freaking out because today’s run was so good, but I’m pissed and disappointed – it takes a lot for me to seek help.   Also, there are very few ART or Graston people in Philly and since I have to rent a Zipcar to deal with it, I’m not going to find someone else.  Hopefully the week will continue to play out well on the heels of today.

Edit: Turns out Direct Access is actually a Federal Law and a bunch of states do this.  They make it a “feature” that they allow you to seek PT without a prescription for 30 days.  Maybe I’m pissed at Pennsylvania a little less now.  Maybe.  Back to hating the damn health system as usual.

Baby’s First Wheels!
I’m old (Olde), and it’s taken me this long to figure out that traveling with a duffel is dumb.  Every time I go anywhere, I look longingly at the other travelers with their handy little wheeled bags while I do the Quasimodo carry.  But at the same token, I always think “how do they fit anything in those?”  After Vegas though, I vowed to get a wheeled bag, no matter the sacrifice to size.

Well blow me down, I found the coolest bag.  It’s roomy, has a lot of variations on how you can pack it, is half hard-case, half duffel (expandable, at that) and lastly, it comes in different colors – easier to spot than black.  It was a little pricey but it’ll last for years, so I figure it’s worth it. First use: San Diego in April.  yay!

Blog Feed
I finally got rid of my original domain name (girl-in-motion.com) but I still have about 90 subscribers still using it in their blog feeds or blog rolls.  If you’ve noticed that the last post in your blog reader (or however you subscribe to this thing) has stopped updating, you’ll want to check that the link is girlinmotion.com (without dashes) to keep getting the latest boring, complaining, whining crap from me.

My leg took a turn for the better this week; I ran 5 consecutive days without deterioration – a major accomplishment.  It’s still not as lithe and free as the right leg, but nearly there.  Fitness is returning as well, but taking its time.

For the most part, I’m positive about the way things are going but still, I miss my Summer self.  I miss fluidity and ease.  I miss confidence.  I miss feeling like a good runner.

No doubt it’ll all come back in due time but at the moment I feel like a clunky farm animal.  Nevertheless, I’m happy to say that after 2 interminable months, it’s time to include this ole thing again…

‘Bout Fucking Time Week In Review
Mon: Vegas – off
Tues: Travel – off
Wed: 6
Thurs: 6
Friday: 9.42 (targeted 9 but got distracted and missed the turn-around)
Sat: 4
Sun: 10
Total: 35.42 mi – paces (per run) averaged 8:54 to 8:28

Note: The week prior was 40mi, but because Sunday’s Half was a big mileage jump for a single run, I played the following days conservatively.  This coming week, however, I’m back on track, so providing my leg stays happy, I’ll hit 48mi. Just wanted to explain that in case you think “35 to 48…Danger! Danger!”

The cow has everything under control.   Moo.

I flew in Saturday afternoon and checked in to Mandalay Bay, chosen because that’s where the race started & ended.  I get up to my room and upon entering, see 2 pieces of luggage in the hall.  I’m taken aback but even moreso when I realize there’s a guy sitting at the desk, typing on a laptop and in a chair next to him sits a woman.

Perplexed and slightly weirded out, I say belligerently  “Uh, what’s up? this is supposed to my room.” and the guy stands up quickly, looking quite scared actually, and tells me they were given that room and didn’t like it but their replacement room isn’t ready.  While he’s explaining and quickly gathering his stuff together, I realize they’re very nice people, and I’m tired from traveling (7+  hours to get there) so I just plop down on the bed, insist they hang out till their room is ready and we shoot the breeze for a while.

At one point, he asks how much the room costs and is shocked that it’s around $200/night.  I ask what he’s paying and he tells me it’s free.  Apparently, he lost a shitload of money there in a previous visit ($8000) and when you do that, the hotel will send invite after invite for you to stay there for free.  The good news is that the money he lost was actually won there first, so he came out even.  Anyway, that was my little education on how to get free rooms in Vegas.  Of course, I had to take a photo of them for Facebook because the situation was so ridiculous.

Roomies for an hour

About an hour after that, I meet up with my long-time yet never-previously-met online running sister, Carrie, who I’ve just loved for ages.  She and her friend Dina were hilarious and so easy to hang with, it was like we’d known each other forever (a theme for the entire weekend, actually).  We went to the Expo and dinner, then spent over an  hour trying to figure out how to get back to our hotel.  Here we are in the midst of the Venetian trying in vain to escape.

Dina, Me and Carrie

The next morning was CIM (California International Marathon) where the crazy doublers were doing their first marathon of the day along with a handful of non-doubling friends, so I had great fun tracking their races.  Almost every single person I knew PRd with a seamless, wonderful race…it was just a joyful morning.

After that, I went over to the Aria to meet Jay, who had flown in that morning after doing the Northface 50-miler the day before.  Jay is a gifted, speedy runner (he’s shooting for a 2:26 this Spring at Boston) and while he had signed up for the 50mile race, he hadn’t been training for it though he’d been doing some crazy stunt running in the weeks beforehand (Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim).  As it turned out, our friend Steve was doing the 50-miler but at the last minute, lost his pacer, so Jay offered to pace Steve.  Those guys kicked crazy ass, coming in well under Steve’s goal and almost 2 hours faster than the previous year.

Anyway, Jay was feeling amazingly good for having done 50mi the previous day.  We had brunch and bloody marys at around noon, which was my pre-race meal and hydration plan.  It was the last thing I had before the 5:30 race start, which worked out fine, except for me fighting drowsiness in the interim.

Jay and me brunchin' it up

At around 3pm, most of the CIM crew showed up in the lobby for a quick pre-race meeting.  It was so exciting to see them, some I’d met before and some for the first time: Paul, Matt, Kevin, Catherine, Holly, James and Matt’s girlfriend, Erin.

With a couple hours left, I went back to the room to get my running garb on before meeting Matt for the race.

The Race
First off, thank god I was injured for this one, because if it was a goal race, I’d have been incredibly pissed.  It was a clusterfuck on many levels, though for Matt and I, running at la-la-la pace, it didn’t affect us, but we could easily see the mess it was for those who were running the full or anyone trying to get a goal.

As far as my leg, I was really nervous about it.  My last run, a 5-miler on Friday, was not a feel-good run, my leg was pissed at me for having made it do two 8-milers before it was ready, so I was very nervous about how I was going to get through 13.  On the good side, Saturday was a rest day and I had most of Sunday as well.

Since the race started & ended at my hotel, the place was a madhouse with runners everywhere you looked (there were 44,000 participants).  Here I am with Matt before the race.

Matt and me before the race. I'm a dead ringer for Eddie Munster.

We line up, freezing our asses off (very windy at the start) and at 5:30pm, the gun goes off.  Matt and I, Lame and Lamer, begin our night-time journey up the Strip.  He was a total blast to run with, we talked and laughed, stopped at iHop so he could take a piss (44,000 runners and they had about 3 banks of Porta-pottys on the whole damn course).  I mentioned my leg but didn’t tell him how scared I was about it, so when I’d innocently ask “do you need to go slower, are you ok?” (he’d just run a 3:01 marathon that morning) I was actually doing it for myself as much as him, always relieved when he’d say “let’s pull it back”.

As it turned out, my leg was not a problem at all.  I was ever so slightly aware of my groin (all that’s left of the injury), but it never got worse so it wasn’t a factor at all.  And as the miles ticked by, I felt stronger and less careful, so he eventually had to ask me to pull it back regularly, which I was totally fine to do – the race was a wash as far as time, I couldn’t have cared less what we ended up with.

I wore my Garmin, btw, but the satellites didn’t catch for over an hour into the race, so I never looked at it, though I did press lap during the iHop stop, just for posterity’s sake.  With about 2 miles to go, Matt realizes if we speed up a bit, we can come in under 2hours.  I didn’t care but it was kind of fun having something to shoot for at the end.

When we were almost done, we discussed how we’d cross the finish to which I instantly replied “holding hands!” because I’ve never had the occasion to do that and this was a special little situation we had here.  Some guy next to us heard us and said how sweet that was, so we chatted with him for a bit before giving it a “kick” (totally deserves quotation marks since our kick was probably around 8:30 pace, lol).  As we turned the corner to the finish area, we passed Cheap Trick playing their one big hit “I Want You To Want Me” which was kinda fun.  We made it in 1:59:54. Hilarious.

As for the finish, not only did we hold hands, but we did it total noob-style up in the air which makes for a totally goofy finish video but if you keep watching, you see us hug and that was a pretty sweet moment. 2nd video on this page, we come into the frame at 6 seconds.

We thought we got a racing shot together but I guess the photographer missed it, bummer.  Behold my general demeanor throughout the race:

Happy Me

As for the rest of our crew, Paul, who was supposed to do the double and is actually the person who thought up the crazy scheme in the first place, missed his plane to Sacramento, so Vegas was his “only” marathon of the day, but as mentioned, the race was a clusterfuck so while he did great, it was nowhere near his potential had it been a regular, not screwed-up race (ex. the pacers were having to run up on the sidewalks due to walkers in the one tiny lane they allotted to the Full people).  Carrie also had a tough time and gave up on it being a goal race after the merge of Halfers and Full people (terrible for the full folks) but luckily she found Dina so they finished together.  The doublers all finished between 4 and 5 hours, some of them stopping at a liquor store for beer, midway.

Party!
After the race, Kevin and his wonderful wife Catherine had reserved the Media Suite at Mandalay for a party pad and it was so cool:  floor to ceiling windows with a magnificent view of the city and a bathroom as big as my apartment.  Eventually, everyone trickled in, including some folks I hadn’t seen yet – Steve, who had done that studly 50-miler the day before the Vegas full, arrived with his wife Gina and her two friends, Melissa and Katy (who ended up being a total blast to hang with, more on that below) as well as Beth and her husband.  Beth has Lupus and was the impetus for Steve doing his particular contribution to the double race craziness, running it for charity.

We finally make it out to find dinner but because the place was so packed with runners, we didn’t eat until 2:30am.  After dinner, Steve, Jay and I hit the Black Jack tables…a totally new experience for me.  I’ve been to Vegas twice, once for work and once as a jump off for a Grand Canyon trip but the only gambling I’ve ever done involved one-armed bandits. The tables have always been a complete mystery to me, so it was really fun to watch and learn.  We stayed there till 4:30am.  Classic.

The next day, I met up with Steve and his harem for a little more Black Jack fun before meeting the folks who hadn’t left yet, for lunch.  There were about 13 of us still, so it was a pretty good crowd.  Here’s a photo of me and the guys from our forum thread.  What a studly lineup.

Kevin, me, Matt, Paul, Steve

Monday Night
Everyone had dispersed at this point but Steve and the ladies were still around so we had a blast perusing different casinos, doing this goofy novelty Photoshop thing where they Photoshop your head onto models who, of course, are bustier and hotter than you’ll ever be.  Here we are in the casino:

Katy, Gina, Steve, me, Melissa

Steve, btw, not only was my Black Jack instructor, he even let me lose some of his money, which scared the shit out of me, but to counter that, I conferred with him or Gina every time it was my turn to make a decision.  Was great fun, thanks again, Steve!!

At around 2am, drunk from margarita, beer and vodka, I ventured onto the karaoke stage.  I figured it out today, it’s been 12 years since I opened my mouth to sing so I knew I’d suck.  Choosing a song was crazy because there were so many to choose from and I don’t have a go-to karaoke song having only done it once before.  I ended up with Walk On By, and if it wasn’t humiliating enough sucking in general, the key was too high, so I had the guy start it again in a lower key.  I still warbled and ended up in pitch-hell, but fuck, it’s Vegas, so no regrets.  Here’s your proof:

2am Karaoke Hell. Note how I'm really getting my groove on (please God, when will this song be over?)

And that’s it.  An epic vacation and one of the most fun weekends I’ve had.  Big love to all you guys and gals that I got to hang with, I’m sure we’ll be doing it again sometime, somewhere.  Viva Las Vegas!

Life’s a trip.  I’ve gone from Boohoo Blue to Luckiest Lady in the span of a few short days.  Here are the highlights:

#1. Runners World has featured one of my Gifted Runner shirts in their Unique Christmas Gifts for Runners web slideshow.  Way cool surprise.

#2. Just when I think it’s a dead month for voiceovers, I get a flurry of bookings.  It’s already been a lucrative week and fun too, didn’t have to speak much Medical-ese, mostly plain English.

#3. I committed to something next September that’ll be way out of my comfort zone: Reach The Beach relay.  There are two teams (20+ people) comprised of RW forumites, though they hang out in a different sub-forum than the one I frequent, so I only know a few of them and that’s through Facebook.  This adds an extra level of unknown fun to the adventure – more imaginary friends becoming real ones.  I heart this.

#4. I found $20 on the floor at Target yesterday.

#5.  Running has been beautiful.  I bumped up a little sooner than I would have if not for the Half, but the rest days are keeping my legs in check.  I finally feel like I’ve come out the other side.  Whew!  The week, when done, will look like this: 6, 8, Rest, 8, 5, Rest/Travel, 13.1. The face already looks like this:

Viva Las Vegas!
When next I write, it’ll be from a hotel room in that man-made desert wonderland.  In the meantime, I want to send out early race wishes for all my friends racing CIM, Vegas or White Rock.  This weekend will be a race tracker’s paradise.

A special Good Luck goes to my brave pals doing both CIM and Vegas in one godawfully long day – Paul, Holly, James and Matt – along with Steve, who is doing his own freaky stunt: The Northface 50mi race on Saturday, then going to Sacramento to cheer the CIM crew, then the Full in Vegas. Needless to say, they’re all insane.

Also racing and hanging with me this weekend will be Carrie (finally, Girlfriend, we meet!) and sweet Kevin who are doing one marathon each and Jay who is doing Northface (not the 50miler, maybe the marathon) then will jump in the course for a bit at Vegas.  And this is just the core group, not including spouses and friends.

Lastly, there’ll also be a handful of forum/Facebook/blog friends doing Vegas, too.  Off the top of my head: Joe, Eric, Jeff and Deb.  To you guys, I’m gonna be at the Expo on Saturday probably around 4:30 or 5, so hopefully we can bump in to each other then if not during the race itself.

So that’s the story.  Next post comes from Vegas, Babies.  Till then…muah!

OK, pity party is over.  Now it’s time to talk about last week’s running, which helped fuel the pity party bonfire.

Toward the beginning of the week, things were chugging along and paces were getting recognizable again.  Tuesday I did a 5-miler averaging 8:36 with a couple 8:20 miles in there.  This was heartening and made me think I’d be back in a timely fashion or at least, Vegas wouldn’t be a big deal.

It was also notable because towards the end of that run, I got hit in the ear by a goose.  The odd thing was that there was a lady walking her dog a few feet away and I’m sure she heard me (one doesn’t get sideswiped by a flying goose without emitting a shocked noise that might include “oh, shit!”) but she didn’t even glance my way.  I would have appreciated an amused witness but No.

Starting Wednesday, things went wonky.  I developed a couple tweaks, one that didn’t worry me and one that did.  The worrisome one was a tender muscle in the left inner thigh, the area of my injury.  I took the next couple days very slowly, capping them at 4mi, but when it wasn’t better on Friday, I figured I should take both Saturday and Sunday off.

You already know what a ball of fun I was on Saturday so it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you I considered cancelling Vegas.  Another thought was to give my bib (minus the chip) to our friend Jay who will be jumping in for a bit to run with the Half or Full crew, but the idea of spectating would be too depressing for words. I’d probably end up at the slot machines downing Mai Tais and blubbering over lost nickels.

On Sunday, however, perspective and common sense returned. I reminded myself that Matt, the friend I’ll be running with, will be in great pain from having done a marathon that morning so we’ll simply be better matched than I initially predicted, no reason to think I’ll be a drag on him.  I also decided that if those 2 rest days didn’t do the trick, I’d make an appointment with the ART lady.

Happiness and joy, today was the best run I’ve had since coming back. I was slow as hell and will continue to be all week (pace has no place coming back from injury, now I know. duh) but I ran 6 blissfully untweaked miles – the farthest I’ve gone so far. I only have a few days left to regain some distance and obviously, will be topping out appreciably under 13.1, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to complete the distance.  Pathetic, but a step up from teary drunken nickels.

Hairdo
I got my hair cut off yesterday in a pixie cut.  I did have some momentary Beiber concern while the hairdresser was blowdrying it, but luckily it was just a passing trick of the eye.  I love it, actually.  Plus now I get to play around with Product.

I love how the hairdressing industry has managed to make Product an encompassing name in its own right to describe all things bottles and jarred.  Why waste breath on that pesky “a” beforehand?  Let the dweebs use a product or even products…I use Product.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cook Meal.  See ya later.