Back Into the Swing of Things

It's been 40 days since my last post. I got a little lazy with my posting, along with moving and work. My running schedule has been very off. Not long after my last post I ran over 5 miles, but then things got a little crazy and I allowed that to be an excuse as to why I didn't run.

It's been hard because our financial situation has been really frustrating and we had to move again (the 4th time in the past 10 months)! This time into Poppy's town home, which has been a HUGE blessing. Because my pay scale since I've been licensed has been sporadic at best, I can't count on a fixed amount every week, so living in the town home will allow us to breathe a little bit.

But enough of the excuses. The main reason I haven't been running is because I allowed myself to get out of the habit since we moved. That led to me losing some, or most, of my drive to run a marathon.

But a funny thing happened over the weekend. I was reading some stuff on Tim Ferriss' blog and in one of his posts he mentioned an article about a guy named Dean Karnazes. He said something about this guy running an ultra-marathon, which is a 135 mile trek through Death Valley in the summer. This guy sleeps 4 hours a night, runs a marathon every morning, gets back in time to make his family breakfast, and takes his kids to school. He's basically a family man who also happens to be a bit of a genetic freak that can run for 350 straight miles, not sleeping for 3 days!

His most recent mind-blowing experience was running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. I watched the clip of him on the Conan O'Brien show the day after he finished his 50th marathon (New York City Marathon).

I'm going to get his book, but I have to say, what I saw on his site really, really, REALLY lit a fire under me. I was so motivated to get up and run this morning that I hardly slept, although half of that can be attributed to Trent keeping me up for 2 hours.

I got up around 3 am and ate a banana and a piece of toast. I stretched, bundled up (it's cold this morning), and went running.

My goal was to go up Campo Bello to 20th street, go north to Union Hills, then west all the way to 7th street, south to Bell, and then either stop at our town home complex or continue on to 20th street before heading north to Campo Bello and back home, depending on how I felt.

At about Grovers, I started to push through my wall and I felt like I could go forever. However, at the same time, I started getting a sharp, swelling pain just under my right kneecap. It didn't feel very good (still doesn't... I got ice on it as I type this) and got progressively worse. I know exactly what it was. My glutes started to tighten up, which led to my IT band tightening up, which affected the muscles around my knee. As I ran, it felt like a knife was stabbing into my knee. It was also swelling up and I had a hard time bending my leg.

I made it past Bell and all the way up to about 12th Street before I had to slow down to a walk. I walked for about 100 yards, then ran again. I didn't get very far before I had to stop. I thought about how much pain Dean Karnazes had to push through to do all the long distance runs he's done, and I figured I could push through another 4 1/2 blocks. I started to run again, but the pain and extreme tightness in my IT band was too much to bear. I had to walk the rest of the way home, and it was not easy. I think the cold temperature didn't help much either.

I felt pretty bummed out because I wanted to run 5-6 miles this morning and really push myself beyond my normal limits. I didn't know how far my goal for this morning was at the time, but I figured it was between 5 and 6 miles. I was frustrated that I probably barely ran 3 miles, if that. Or so I thought.

After I ate, drank a ton of H2O, stretched and recovered a little bit, I went and drove my route and discovered, much to my surprise, that I actually ran 4 miles. I was shocked I actually ran that far. If my legs had cooperated with my mind and lungs, I would have easily accomplished my goal.

Oh well.

That's OK because I know I can and will do it later this week.