I'm beginning to realize that the term Stress Fracture has multiple meanings:
1. Stress from over training fractures bones in your body
2. Stress from not being able to train due to stress fractures fractures your mental being!!
So as I mentioned before, I got stress fractures in my left foot back at the beginning of August. I went to the orthopedic doctor who charged me $400 for 30 seconds of his time. Since I didn't feel like spending another half of a paycheck for the doctor to tell me that 6 weeks had passed so my fractures should be healed, I decided the take the boot off myself...well maybe after 4 weeks instead of 6. I walked around on it, it didn't hurt. I ran a few miles, it didn't hurt. So I started up on a novice half marathon training plan and enrolled in boot camp classes twice a week.
Well it has been 3 weeks since I took the boot off and 1 week since I officially took the boot off. And the pain is coming back. WAH! I tried to stop the pain for getting worse so I went out out and bought new running shoes. Now I didn't NEED running shoes but the logic in my head went something like this...
1. I trained for a half marathon on an accelerated schedule last year wearing Nike running shoes and didn't get any stress fractures.
2. I kept training in said Nikes after my half marathons earlier this year with no issues with my feet.
3. I bought a new pair of Mizunos and started a marathon training plan (not really adding a lot of miles at all, in fact doing more cross training to avoid over training on my feetsies) and got stress fractures within 4 weeks of starting
SO I went back to my running store and explained that I thought my shoes contributed to my stress fractures, they agreed that this could be possible so they sold me a brand new pair of Nikes and inserts for a whopping $140. I figured $140 was nothing compared to the Dr bill of having to go back.
I got to the gym all excited to run a few miles in my new shoes to test them out. I made it a whole quarter of a mile before BOTH feet started screaming "OWWWW! YOU'RE HURTING ME!!!!" Sucks...
So now I'm worried that I've killed both of my feet and I'm going to have to go back to the Dr and actually follow up and be a good girl and delay training another 6-8 weeks and look totally stupid for being the girl who trained so much that she has to wear walking boots on both feet. The only good thing that can come from this is getting front row parking in our mile long parking lot at work...
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Marathon
Third post of the night, woo hoo! I hope it took you a few days to get caught up so you won't be disappointed when it takes me a week or so to update this again...so if you haven't read the other 2 posts yet, stop after this one and come back tomorrow (all of the posts kind of stand on their own and you can read them out of order...)
So, this one will be short and sweet (sorry!) but thought provoking on your end...
I won't make my goal of running a marathon before I turn 27 (I really only gave myself a week of slack between when I planned to run it and my 27th birthday...oops) but that doesn't mean I won't run a marathon soon! I need to find another one to train for.
Any one have any suggestions? My only requirements are:
1. It has to be at least 24 weeks from now. Most training plans are at least 18 weeks and assume you are running 8-9 miles on your long runs...I'm not there yet!
2. It has to be fun
3. It has to be affordable
Suggest away! :)
So, this one will be short and sweet (sorry!) but thought provoking on your end...
I won't make my goal of running a marathon before I turn 27 (I really only gave myself a week of slack between when I planned to run it and my 27th birthday...oops) but that doesn't mean I won't run a marathon soon! I need to find another one to train for.
Any one have any suggestions? My only requirements are:
1. It has to be at least 24 weeks from now. Most training plans are at least 18 weeks and assume you are running 8-9 miles on your long runs...I'm not there yet!
2. It has to be fun
3. It has to be affordable
Suggest away! :)
My (not so) Secret Shame
Since I haven't been running the past few weeks I needed something to fill my free time. After I got bored biking at the gym I turned to the next logical option for someone who can't exercise...I started baking (again). I justified spending time in the kitchen by telling myself that I was making all of these goodies to sell at work to help fundraise for the 5k. I ended up earning $52 from all of my hard work and probably consuming about 10,000 extra calories over the course of 6 weeks (not including all of the ice cream I ate).
*Disclaimer: Betty Crocker didn't pay me anything for my opinion, but I wouldn't be upset if they sent me some sweet baking goodies ;-)
I keep a photo album on Facebook to keep track of all of my Baking Adventures so a fellow blogger suggested that I turn this blog into a hybrid running/baking blog. My first baking adventure recap on this blog will be FUN da-middles cupcakes. Ok so these aren't homemade but they are a new product I discovered at the grocery store last week.
Luckily a close friend of mine had a birthday last week (I really couldn't force anymore baked goods on my coworkers last week) so I had an excuse to try them. They were soo much fun! Everyone has seen a filled cupcake, but most of the time you can see where the cupcake has been holed out after it was baked to make room for the filling. These things were like cupcake shaped Twinkies and super easy to make!
Here's a few pictures I took throughout the baking process:
You bake them with the filling inside! The uncooked filling tastes a lot like marshmallow fluff so maybe I'll try my own with fluff one day...
You can't even tell they have filling inside! And no need to frost!
(PS I added sprinkles in the batter to make them more festive)
Ok, so I need to work on centering the filling a little better...
They were pretty tasty and could hold their own without frosting so I didn't frost them...but I'd like to try to make my own, maybe from scratch, and see if frosting would make them better. Anyone have a birthday coming up??
Just for fun, check out this awesome birthday candle! On top of an awesome birthday cake I made earlier this year...ok I'll show you why the birthday cake was so awesome.
It was a checkerboard cake!!
Race Recap: Pelham Old Home Day 5k
HELLO Friends!
The last time I blogged was a few months ago. And coincidentally it was to solicit donations for the Pelham Old Home Day 5k benefiting the Nashua Special Olympics. The race was yesterday! So I figured I had to provide you with at least a race recap.
But first let me explain why I've been missing for 2 months. Right after my last post I ran a lot, biked a lot, hiked a lot, and then ran some more. And then I went to run race #8 of the summer trail series I was participating in, my second week in the big girl 5 mile race! About a half a mile into the race my foot started bothering me. But being stupid, I kept running. Half way into the race (when I was as far as I was going to get from the finish line, with no phone) the nagging pain turned into an unbearable pain. So I hobbled back to my car and drove to the ER (a costly mistake with my new health insurance! Apparently just looking at an ER costs $1000). My work week was going to be really busy and I didn't have time to take off to go to the Dr so I wanted to get it taken care of ASAP and outside of work hours to avoid further injury. They X-rayed, came back with a diagnoses of "sprained foot" and gave me a prescription for some ridiculous painkillers (which I didn't fill!) and a pair of crutches with instructions to go to my real Dr if the pain didn't go away after 2 days on the crutches.
Obviously the pain didn't go away and the crutches left me trying to find creative new ways to maneuver around the office (warning to all hard core runners out there, don't neglect your upper body, you'll regret it if you ever need crutches!). Rather than adding to my growing Dr bill, I skipped my Dr and found someone who knows bones. The dude walked in and without even talking to me told me it was stress fractures and charged me $400 for his time and a fancy Aircast. Which limited my exercise options for a few weeks. I took this opportunity to throw myself into 80 hour work weeks to forget about the fact that I couldn't run (and to pay off those stupid Dr's!). That pretty much catches up to this weekend.
I decided to take the cast off a few weeks ago to slowly work my way back into running. I started just walking around to make sure the pain was gone and I slowly started adding running in over the past 2 weeks. The big test was yesterday, with the 5k. Kind of fitting that this was my first post injury run. Last year this race got me hooked on running and this year it reminded me why I love running (because I had started to forget the past few weeks!). I finished in 28:45, which was 40 seconds faster than last year. I had been doing better with my speed but obviously I lost a lot of that recently. I also had really bad stomach cramps throughout pretty much the entire race.
But it was all worth it in the end. I had fun hanging out with the Special Olympics Athletes who were participating in the race. I was surprised how many remembered me from last year! I ended up getting 2nd place in the volunteer fundraising category which came with a $25 gift certificate to the local running store, woot!
So that should get you all caught up to today. Hopefully I'll be better with this blog now that I'm running but only time will tell...
The last time I blogged was a few months ago. And coincidentally it was to solicit donations for the Pelham Old Home Day 5k benefiting the Nashua Special Olympics. The race was yesterday! So I figured I had to provide you with at least a race recap.
But first let me explain why I've been missing for 2 months. Right after my last post I ran a lot, biked a lot, hiked a lot, and then ran some more. And then I went to run race #8 of the summer trail series I was participating in, my second week in the big girl 5 mile race! About a half a mile into the race my foot started bothering me. But being stupid, I kept running. Half way into the race (when I was as far as I was going to get from the finish line, with no phone) the nagging pain turned into an unbearable pain. So I hobbled back to my car and drove to the ER (a costly mistake with my new health insurance! Apparently just looking at an ER costs $1000). My work week was going to be really busy and I didn't have time to take off to go to the Dr so I wanted to get it taken care of ASAP and outside of work hours to avoid further injury. They X-rayed, came back with a diagnoses of "sprained foot" and gave me a prescription for some ridiculous painkillers (which I didn't fill!) and a pair of crutches with instructions to go to my real Dr if the pain didn't go away after 2 days on the crutches.
Obviously the pain didn't go away and the crutches left me trying to find creative new ways to maneuver around the office (warning to all hard core runners out there, don't neglect your upper body, you'll regret it if you ever need crutches!). Rather than adding to my growing Dr bill, I skipped my Dr and found someone who knows bones. The dude walked in and without even talking to me told me it was stress fractures and charged me $400 for his time and a fancy Aircast. Which limited my exercise options for a few weeks. I took this opportunity to throw myself into 80 hour work weeks to forget about the fact that I couldn't run (and to pay off those stupid Dr's!). That pretty much catches up to this weekend.
I decided to take the cast off a few weeks ago to slowly work my way back into running. I started just walking around to make sure the pain was gone and I slowly started adding running in over the past 2 weeks. The big test was yesterday, with the 5k. Kind of fitting that this was my first post injury run. Last year this race got me hooked on running and this year it reminded me why I love running (because I had started to forget the past few weeks!). I finished in 28:45, which was 40 seconds faster than last year. I had been doing better with my speed but obviously I lost a lot of that recently. I also had really bad stomach cramps throughout pretty much the entire race.
But it was all worth it in the end. I had fun hanging out with the Special Olympics Athletes who were participating in the race. I was surprised how many remembered me from last year! I ended up getting 2nd place in the volunteer fundraising category which came with a $25 gift certificate to the local running store, woot!
So that should get you all caught up to today. Hopefully I'll be better with this blog now that I'm running but only time will tell...
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