In my first blog I mentioned that I tried running last year. When I was a young and foolish 49. I figured I've been going to the gym, doing Zumba, lost a few pounds, heck I even had a pair of sneakers. I got this! I thought four miles would be a reasonable first run but after a mile I was done and had to hobble back to the house, looking more like I was 50 rather than 49. I went out and bought a knee brace and kept going, and was the epitome of the phrase: more guts than brains. By the end of the summer I still couldn't make it more than 3 miles and had to ice my knee after every run so long distance wasn't going to happen and I gave up.
Lisa has a lot of "guys" as in "I know this guy....": moving to Chicago? She knows a girl who manages apartments there; want venison?Brian usually gets an extra deer; doctor? Babysits for a orthopedic surgeon who specializes in spines; overage/overweight/beginning runner with a sore knee? Do you want a personal trainer, a massage therapist, or a family of experienced runners. Yes please. I talked to all of them and decided my knee problem was actually a hip problem, I needed some different stretches, and I got a hand-me-down subscription to a running magazine. Who knew there was more to it then lacing up the sneakers. So in honor of the upcoming 50th birthday I started again. Older and wiser(see definition of wise in my second post)
In June I successfully completed a 5K race brace-free and pain-free, well relatively pain free. I got a half marathon training plan and started increasing my mileage. I quit running with my iPod so I could listen to my body's conversations:
"Are we really doing this?"
"Lungs, you still working?"
"Squirrel!"
"Feelin' ok knee?"
"Are we there yet?"
And that's just the first mile.
Do you know how it feels when everything falls into place, the stars align, and whatever you do just works perfectly? Yeah me neither, but this training was going pretty good. Up to about 4 weeks before race day. I had a 10 mile run scheduled and the route has a short (100 yd) but steep hill around mile 7, so I wisely(again see definition above) choose to run down the hill instead of up it. At the bottom, and for the next mile my knee let me know that was not the best decision:
"Idiot you should have walked that part"
"I tried to warn you"
"you never listen to me"
I was wishing I had my iPod.
I ended up walking the last two miles and icing my knee for the next two days. Back to rehabbing the knee/hip. I was able to finish the training and complete the 13.1 miles last month, but it wasn't pretty. I couldn't run for a couple weeks afterward and just now I'm back up to 4 miles a couple days a week. Inside on a treadmill since it's cold and dark here now.
The moral of the story.......well there really isn't a moral to my story. But I am planning a 10K in May, and a half in June and maybe just maybe a full marathon in September. Who knows, I'll be 51 by then and may have out grown this running nonsense.
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