Monday, July 03, 2017

And then I got injured

My left hip started to hurt three days before the Columbus 10K.  I thought maybe it was because I was doing a track workout - quick stuff, lots of circles - the pain persisted and hurt with every step of that race.  After that race I was in a world of pain.  I could barely walk and the pain was very reminiscent of when I got the stress fracture two years ago.

I called the doctor the very next day.  I've got big plans and big goals this year and if I'm injured, let's get on with it.  The doctor, of course, thought it was another stress fracture.  Awesome.  I had some x-rays that showed nothing, was told no more running for a while (double awesome) and was scheduled for an MRI.

A few days later I had the MRI and a few days after that I was back in the doctor's office.  No stress fracture.  Say what?  I could go back to working out as long as it didn't hurt.  Honey, everything hurts but if it's not fractured, I'll keep working out in some way.  I did a lot of swimming and a lot of water jogging.  I tried one run.  I made it nine minutes and had to turn around and walk/limp home. 

I sent a message to the doctor.  She wanted to do more evaluations including another MRI, this time with contrast - an injection right into the hip joint.

Last week I had the arthrogram MRI done at the local hospital.  It was painful, it took forever, and I don't ever want to do it again.  I can't believe I've now had two of them for my hips!  I got the results the next day.  I have a labrum tear on the left side (both my hips are gonna fall apart!) and tendonitis where the hamstring connects to the sit bone.  I exchanged about one billion emails with the doctor - why is there pain in my outer hip and my groin when the tendonitis was in the hamstring/sit bone?  She wants to do physical therapy.  I want better answers.  She said I could workout as long as it didn't hurt.

I, of course, signed up for a race a few days later...

Sunday, July 02, 2017

Columbus 10K 2017

Last year was the first time I ran the Columbus 10K.  It was super fast and super competitive, and I knew I wanted to add it to the schedule again this year.  Three days before the race I started to have a little niggle in my hip (more on that another day) and frankly, I just haven't been feeling in all that great of shape, so I didn't expect a whole lot from this race.

We got down there in good time, but there was still a line for the three port-a-johns already a block long.  I decided to take my warm up run to the other side of Columbus to where I knew there was a public bathroom.  It was hot and humid and I was feeling like this race was going to suck.  I barely got back in time to get in line for the start.

I decided I just wanted to go hard and not worry about my splits, so I put a sticker over my watch.  In hindsight, this was a bad idea as my first mile was the fastest of the day and although I thought I was holding back, I wasn't.  I was suffering right from the beginning.  I wasn't getting passed by many people but I was getting passed and I was falling further and further behind.  I was struggling to keep my head in the game.  Six miles felt like they took forever. 


I have no idea what my final time was, but it was a solid 1:20 slower than last year.  I have no excuses but it is frustrating that I feel less in shape than last year when I have bigger goals this year.

Regardless, I still placed in my age group.  Last year I was fifth with quite a respectable time and this year with a slower time I finished third and walked away with a camp mug. 


Saturday, July 01, 2017

WORST.BLOGGER.EVER!!

Worst.Blogger.EVER!!!

I said I was going to be consistent last month and whatnot and I wrote one freakin' time?  Can I do better in July? 

Here's what's coming up.
  • I got hurt
  • I ran a race
  • I got more hurt
  • I had a whole bunch of MRIs and X-rays done
  • I did another race
  • I'm still hurt
Chew on that.  I'll be back tomorrow.
 

Friday, June 02, 2017

I'm Back!

Life has been busy.  That's an understatement.  Training and work and parenting and wife-ing and I'm enrolled in some online classes and my handicap dog and LIFE!  This blog has taken a hit.  I don't even know if people still blog or if anyone cares.  But, I'm gonna try to give it a few weeks of concentration and see if the magic is still there or if anyone still cares and then who knows?!

The best thing happened to me today.  I went my favorite local running store to pick up my race packet for this weekend (oh yeah, I'm racing!).  I gave them my last name and the clerk said, "Samantha?"  Nope, dude.  I'm Meredith.  He was shocked by that because Samantha was 28 and I'm 11 years older than that.  Still looking hot!


Saturday, April 15, 2017

Do What You Need to Do

Day 1

It's 5-1/2 months until aquathlon nationals and I'm ready to commit.  I started the day off strong with a run test.  It's been since December since I had a run test and then I was coming off a terrible cold and was just beginning my marathon training.  This time I am coming off of the marathon and starting to feel like myself again.

The test is 3000m on the track as hard as you can go.  I started out fast, probably too fast, but I was doing what I could to hang out.  Several time I had to sort it out in my head.  My brain struggles on the track.  I would do much better if the run test was a race.  I clocked in my first "mile" (the garmin never matches up to the track) at a 6:14.  Holy pajamas!  I haven't run that fast in years!  I pushed and pushed and came away with a 12:41, which is like a 6:49 pace (although my watch read 1.99 miles for 6:22 pace).  This was a 45 second improvement over the last run test I did.  Hopefully this translates into some speedy races this spring/summer.

So now I have a baseline for a little while, which includes new heart rate zones and paces.  Most of my workouts have one or the other so lots of updates to come soon as to if I can hit these new zones/paces.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Vacation Pictures

Yep, I promised them last week, but I suck.  No, I'm adulting.  And adulting is hard.  I'm exhausted.  I have a hard time finding time to do my workouts let alone blog about them and the rest of my life.  But today we cancelled our cable which means I'm gonna have lots of time (I'm kind of addicted to tv).  I'm gonna try harder.  I swear.  I SWEAR!!!

Two weeks ago we went down to Florida for our annual spring break with my parents.  My parents, now retired, are staying down there for a little over a month so we went and visited and stayed with them.  Here's a few pictures (mostly of Anderson) from our trip.  (And if you're my Instagram friend, you've seen most of these.)

The day we flew down to Florida was Anderson's 4th birthday.  We had gotten up at 4:00am and the little dude did not take a nap all day.  He was nearly asleep as we lit up his cupcake.

Looks like he still enjoyed his cupcake, though.

Our family friend who lives in the area got Anderson a kite for his birthday.  He loved it!

This is probably my favorite pictures from the trip.  I made this my lock screen on my phone. 

My boys. 

Sunset at the beach.

Oh yeah.  I was on this trip too.

Weirdos. 

Immediately after he got to the park he tripped over the root and landed on his face.  Hence, the dirt on his face. 

These are out of order.  On the way home, the captain invited Anderson into the cockpit, let him sit in his seat, and even wear his hat.  Um, I was jealous. 

It wasn't all beach (although it mostly was).  One morning Anderson enjoyed running through the fountains in the middle of Venice.

My sister is down there this week and my parents come home in a few weeks.  I have done this trip every year for as long as I can remember.  It's fun, although with a toddler now, it is a lot of work.  There's no more taking a nap on the beach.  Next year we will probably not get to go since we will be going to Boston for the marathon.  It's time for a change, though.  Maybe the break's not such a bad thing.  Either way, anything has got to be better than winter in Ohio.  Happy spring!!!

Thursday, April 06, 2017

Oh, what a night!!!

We took a family vacation next week (pictures to come!!) and arrived home very late Sunday night/Monday morning.  Our flight got home after midnight, which after getting out of the plane, getting our luggage, riding the shuttle to our car, and driving home, we got home around 1:00am.

Because our dog now has special needs, we needed to hire a pet sitter to come to our house several times a day and empty her bladder, etc. instead of just kenneling her like we normally do.  The company was very thorough and even took out the trash, checked our mail, brought in the newspaper, and whatnot.  When we got home we tried to get inside and the back doors were locked, something that is not normally done as we don't have keys to those doors.  Our garage is locked and it is connected to the back doors so there you go.  Anyway, I told Dave, hey, just go unlock the front door?!  As he walked out of the garage he quickly came back - the pet sitter had his key and my key was hanging in the kitchen.  Awesome.  My parents have a spare key.  I called them and of course, it was on their key ring and it was in Florida.  So, we spent the night (can we really call it a night if we only slept 3 hours??) at my parents' house.  I finally fell asleep sometime after 2:00 and woke up several times throughout the night. 

The alarm went off bright and early at 6:30 as we had to hurry to Anderson's 4 year old well check at 7:30.  We were wearing the same clothes as yesterday and at least I felt, icky.  The doctor went well, we dropped Anderson off at preschool, and Dave and I drove clear across town to get the key from the dog sitter.  We finally got into our house just before 10am Monday, 9 hours after we got in from vacation.

We opened the door and OMG!  The house smelled like we had 17 dogs.  They did do a good job, but being that our dog now pees on pads instead of outside, I would have liked to have seen them empty the trash or put the pee pads in the outdoor trash can.  We emptied the trash and mopped the floor, and I sprayed air freshener all over the place.  Sloopy also got a bath and now it smells much better.

With only a few hours of sleep, we got showers and went off to work. 

But wait, there's more!!!

I am a very punctual person.  Being on time is being late; being early is being on time!!!  Having a toddler means we get to places barely in time no matter how much time we allow.  So when we left for Florida we were running later than we wanted to be, which meant when our gas light came on in the car we just continued to drive to the airport.  When we returned a week later we sort of forgot we had no gas in the car.  At 1:00am we didn't exactly want to stop for gas, but were nervous about the gauge being correct and time constraints in the morning, etc., that we decided to stop by the gas station a mere spitting distance from our house.  We were one of three cars - a car parked at the store portion of the gas station with a gentleman outside smoking on the hood and a police car with the officer inside the store. While Dave was pumping gas, the officer came out talking on his walkie and taking his goods to his car.  He put the bags inside the door and then went back into the store, entering from the far left door.  As he went in, a woman scurried out of the right-hand door.  She had a small coat wrapped around her and it sort of looked like she was stealing something.  The cop stopped her and made it her come back in the store.  That's when it got interesting.  See, she was wearing thigh-high stockings and high heels and when she turned around we noticed she was wearing nothing else.  NOTHING!  I got to see a "full moon", if you will.  Now I don't know if she was "working" or if she was just up to no good but I really don't like seeing that near my neighborhood nor do I like having to explain to my son that, "maybe she wasn't wearing pants because she had an accident."

Back with some vacation pictures hopefully this week.