Wrapping up 2014, ringing in 2015

Happy 2015! As I sit here thinking about all of my accomplishments of 2014 and planning my goals for 2015, I am reminded about how far behind I am with my blogging and my race recaps from the previous year. If you will allow me, I'd like to skip ahead to my yearly wrap up and goal setti
ng for 2015, then return to finish blogging about the last few months of 2014. It will be a little disjointed, but to me, it seems to make sense.

The number one goal that I had in terms of running this year was to have completed 520 miles. For some more experienced runners, this might have seemed like a really lame goal, but it was just slightly higher than the goal of the year prior, and considering that I spent the last half of 2013 injured, setting this nominal goal for 2014 seemed doable. At the end of the day though, I hadn't counted on being sidelined with foot complications, and this goal was just not attainable.

After calculating and recalculating my tally for the year, I finished having traveled 323.11 miles.

In some respects, I am happy that I was able to do this much, and in other respects, I am saddened that I set a goal and wasn't able to meet it. I hate not finishing what I started, and it feels like I have let myself down. Husbeast keeps telling me to open my eyes and see all that I did manage to accomplish this year instead of what I wasn't able to accomplish... so here goes.

This year, (although I haven't finished blogging about all of them), I completed

• 15 half marathons
• 2 10K races
• 1 6K race
• 2 5K races
• 1 4K race
• 1 race that billed itself as a 5K OCR but came up lacking

and the most important distance race of my life...

• My dissertation was completed and successfully defended, earning me the title of "Doctor."

I also was able to check off another 6 states in my quest for running a half marathon in each state of the United States (KY, TN, MS, AR, LA, UT).

As I think toward next year, I have one goal... and that is to finish what I started last year and reach that number of 520. This year, I will do it.

Tap-n-Run 4K - December 7, 2013

I had hoped to have written this entry before New Years so that at the start of 2014, I would have all the race reports from 2013 races completed and I could start the New Year off with a bang. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get out of my way. I've been wicked depressed since starting to see the new doctor, and while he has cleared me to no longer wear the boot for every day activities, it has just been a rough month for me. I'm still out of commission on the running, but I began today with a much needed bike ride. Not quite as long as I would have liked for it to have been to get my cardio back up to speed, but it's a start after being completely so limited since the first week of December.

Which brings me to the report of my final event of the 2013 year, a 4K "beer run" in Ft. Lauderdale on December 7, 2013... just 6 days after space coast, and 4 days after being put into a much more limiting walking boot. I know many people will read this and groan that I wasn't following Dr.'s orders or that I wasn't truly taking a break, but this was actually BEFORE he told me to completely rest the foot. He even said that I could do it as long as I walked the whole thing, at a leisurely pace and didn't add any extra distance to the race itself. 4K is less than 3 miles. And 5 miles is the 10,000 daily steps that Dr.'s recommend for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So I made the choice to participate. Maybe not the best of choices in retrospect, but I'm not upset that I did it... and I didn't actually cause any extra pain or damage to my foot... so all was good.

Tap-n-run is a 4K race that is being put on throughout the country. What makes this race different than most other shorter distance fun runs is that at every kilometer, participants stop to drink 6oz of beer. I am not a huge beer fan, but husbeast and I thought it would be a lot of fun. He chose to run it, while I chose to take it nice and easy with my friend Allison from Karma Athletes. She didn't want to drink much, so at the start line I chugged the beers for me and gave the other to our Karma president, Danny. And we set out.

Of course I was in my boot, but once I got my momentum going, I was actually going at a nice clip. It was really warm out, and I was exerting myself dragging along that bum leg, so I quickly worked up a sweat. At the first kilometer, I drank both beers for Allison and myself. We were having a good conversation throughout, and the time flew by. It also was really cool that we would overhear people talking about that "beast with a boot" as we were passing them on the course. Although I had been feeling like a failure for letting my foot get so bad and having to go for a followup and all the crap I was going with, it really felt good to hear others taking encouragement from seeing me out there and commenting on my determination.

If there is one thing I hope to leave as a legacy when I am gone, I hope that it is my determination and the fact that I have been able to inspire others to create change in some way. And the motivation, along with the playful banter with Allison really kept me doing

At the 2K mark, I again drank both beers, and I was starting to feel really full. And maybe a little buzzed. At 3K Allison drank hers leaving me with only one beer to drink, thank heavens! I didn't think I could drink any more beer without throwing up. the pressure in my stomach was unreal. And soon we were coming into the chute for the finish line. Ray was there waiting at the finish line where he had been helping to hand out medals since he had finished. He gave me my medal and we went off to the after party for our final beer.

It was a good day but we were home and in bed by 6pm because I'm not a youngin like I used to be. Hammered, I went to bed and slept like a baby.

The next day, I tallied my mileage for the year, and realized that I surpassed my goal of 312 miles for the year by a LOT.

2013 Final Mileage= 472.43 miles.

Once this foot injury heals, I'm aiming my sights a little higher. 520 sounds like a good goal, no?

Sidelined again and a yearly wrap up

It is a couple days before Christmas, which means, less than a week until the year of the half marathons ends. I set many goals. The first being to run a half marathon last January. From there, I set a goal of running 13 half marathons this year, because how cool would it be to run 13 races of a 13.1 distance in 2013?

And now that the year is up, although I backed out of the last 2 half marathons that I had purchased entry into for December, I can see that this year has been a successful first full year as a runner.

Not only did I meet and surpass my goal of 13 half marathons by completing SIXTEEN of them (in SIX different states, no less), I also was able to complete ONE 10-miler race, SEVEN obstacle course races at various distances, and ONE 5K.

That's HUGE!

But my heart still breaks when I think about having to withdraw from the last two races of this season (the Palm Beaches Half Marathon, and the Live Ultimate South Beach Half Marathon). I feel like a failure for not starting those races because I have always reminded myself during races that dead last place is better than not finishing, which is better than not even starting. In my mind, not even starting is one of the worst things that I could possibly do as a runner. I'm ok with other people not starting races, but for me, that is just unacceptable.

Even though I have good reason, and logically I know it was a wise decision (something I probably should have considered before December), I struggle with feeling like a failure.

Where we left off in this blog, I was talking about the Space Coast half marathon, and the incredible pain I felt in my right foot. Up until that point, I had been seeing an orthopedic specialist to treat my foot and closely following his orders. I wore a boot. I stayed off of it when he told me to. I took my medications religiously. I got back into walking and then running just like he had suggested. And I believed him.

I returned to the doctor multiple times for follow-ups, and to see if I was a candidate for cortisone shots (which he told me wouldn't be useful). And finally, back in early November, I accepted what he said, and became resigned to the fact that he thought that the swelling had gone down and this was as good as it would get and I was just in pain from trying to get back out there and on it again.

But I still noticed things. Like the fact that when I took photos of my feet, I could clearly see that the swelling was not gone. The fact that I couldn't weight-bear for much more than a few minutes without needing to sit. The fact that I hurt WAY more as the day progressed, rather than hurting more in the morning (as is customary with residual plantar fasciitis as he claimed I had). And the fact that at random times I was still getting shooting pains through both my heel and the outside of my ankle.

I wanted SO badly to be fixed, that I believed everything I was told. Even when people near and dear to me pushed me to get a second opinion. Part of that (I am sure) was pure stubbornness... but the larger part of that was that I was trusting my doctor. He, after all, is an expert. He's supposed to know things. We are supposed to trust our doctors.

But after Space Coast, I knew that I needed to do something different. Whereas I had been feeling as if I had been getting better for awhile, the day before the half marathon, I just couldn't deny that I was actually getting worse. I had spent so much time putting on a happy face, trying to be strong (like the beast that I really wanted to be), and hiding what was really going on... and finally it was too much to hide. Husbeast noticed. Two of my dear running friends noticed. And they staged (what I can only describe as) and intervention. It was time for a second opinion. With a doctor that specializes in feet.

I went for the appt, he did xrays and an ultrasound, and he immediately put me in a much larger and much more archaically torturous boot. I was under strict orders to stay off of it until I could get a new MRI.

The MRI and followup were the next week, and because my dad was in town (and had also been pushing for me to get a second opinion), like I was a six year old with a sore throat, he marched me right into the appt, and waited for the verdict (poised to take notes to relay back to Husbeast).

And whereas there had been a laundry list of problems evident on the last MRI, the good news was that the list was shorter... Only TWO main problems.

The sheaths around the fascia on the inside of my heel were still incredibly inflamed, and there is a huge pocket of inflammation in the outside of my ankle between the bones. Two separate, but perhaps related injuries.

The good news is, that with the assistance of the ultrasound machine, he could give me the cortisone injections that I had so desperately wanted months ago. This was absolutely a nightmare, and I am getting flashbacks just thinking of it so I wont go there in this post, but I got the shots.

And then I went right back into the boot. And have been ordered to stay off of it until my followup on December 27th. I asked if he thought I would be able to be out of the boot by the end of the month because I had some training to get in before my first full marathon in January. He smiled sadly at me and said that he can't know until we get there. But he said that while his body language clearly told me no.

So there we have it. Why I have been so sad the past few weeks. Not only have I been struggling with this injury while being confined to the couch or a chair, but I have been fighting my own demons. I had a goal to do this full marathon, and now I can't. Even when I was mediocre about WANTING to do this race, I had a goal, and I don't take that lightly. What's more, I roped a dear friend into doing it with me when she clearly didn't want to do it in the first place. And now I can't. It's not even that I want to do it. But I made a commitment to her. And I don't take commitments lightly.

So there you have it. Me, not just feeling like a failure to myself, but what's worse, feeling like I have let down other people in the process too. I don't share that because I need a pep talk or anything. I don't need people to lift me up and make me feel better. I feel like crap. And I deserve to feel like crap.

The silver lining to it all though, is that if I don't do the marathon, that gives me more time to heal, which will allow me to do the next big thing. Another 5 races in 5 days in 5 states. Don't worry though, I have time to heal, that isn't for months and months yet. And when I'm back in the game, I will be better than ever. I've come so far already in this journey, I can get my head (AND my body) back in the game. Just looking at my wrist tells me so.