Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Other happenings

Other exciting things have been happening here as well. On Friday I came home to find a lovely little package from Bia Sport. I was forwarded this site from a friend, Bia is a new company that is looking to offer training tools and a new gps watch that are specific to women! How exciting! We all know that for a woman the cuter our clothes are and the more functional our tools are the more likely we are to go workout (or is that just me). Needless to say I'm super excited to see what Bia rolls out. Since I helped spread the word I was lucky enough to receive a swag bag from Bia including a hot off the press technical shirt.

ignore the pasty white legs, tans aren't in style anyway... right?
I'm anxious to see what Bia has to offer all of us women who are out there achieving athletic goals everyday.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

How I got here

It's difficult to put into words how excited I am to have been chosen as a TriSports Champion. My first experience with TriSports was when I was looking for compression tights to purchase. My friend Molly suggested I check out TriSports for some Zoot Compression Tights. It was right before Christmas and I ended up getting a great price on them. When my much anticipated package arrived (really, who ever thought I would run down the UPS driver for a pair of compression tights) my invoice had a hand written note that said "Thank you Meredith!". This small personal touch made my day, I do a lot of online shopping and can honestly say that I have never received a hand written thank you on my invoice. Also included was a Karma Coupon, it said go volunteer at a local race and enjoy a discount on my next purchase. I was liking this company already.

A month later after about 3 wears of my compression tights one of the seams ripped. I was devastated because these tights are awesome and were really helping with my long run recovery process. I contacted Zoot who said they had a warranty on seams and I just needed to exchange them through TriSports. TriSports was awesome, not only did they send me a label for return shipping but they were also kind enough to include what my original purchase order number was since I no longer had my invoice. TriSports immediately sent out a replacement pair and I was back in business. When I come across a company who has such excellent service I really like to not only continue sending my business there but letting my friends know as well.

Shortly after this TriSports started tweeting and posting on Facebook about their Champions program and asking people to apply. That would be cool I thought, but I'm not a triathlete (at least not yet) so I  probably wouldn't be what they are looking for. But they also said how important community was and giving back. Well, I volunteer at local races because it's just as fun as actually racing and I did coach a team of 6 year old girls to run their first 5k. So while I have never podiumed in anything (except for that one cool first responders category) I am involved in the community and I do network at a lot of these events having had a previous career in non-profit events. I thought about it for days and reminding myself that nothing is ever earned by sitting around and thinking about it and I would never know the answer unless I applied.

As it turns out, TriSports thought I would make a great Champion! It's truly such an honor to have been selected and it makes me want to do more and accomplish more because someone knows I can.

With that being said, check out my new race addition for May 20th. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The wheels keep on turning

Today marked my third day of running with intervals. Before I arrived at the park I had the idea of trying to increase my run intervals to 3 minutes, however I completely forgot about this when I arrived at the park and found a huge group of walkers assembling. By huge, I mean at least 40 people. It became obvious that I needed to get on trail as quickly as possible before this group did. Needless to say, I completely forgot to adjust my intervals on my Garmin before I headed out. Which turned out to be no big deal as I listened to my body and continued running a little further into my walk intervals went it felt okay to do so. This resulted in an over 2 minute time decrease from last Thursday's 3 mile run. The bulk of my run times were 10 minutes or less and for the most part I felt pretty good. I no longer feel devastated about what my body can or can not do and I felt brave enough to even tell my husband today what my goals are for 2013! I'm not sure who was more scared of that admission him or me! 

I think there is a common misconception with stay-at-home Mom's that we have all of this free time on our hands. I find myself having to turn down a lot of things because there just isn't enough time in the day and I think some people wonder what the hell I'm doing. Today is a perfect example of my average day. I woke up around 6:30am and checked email and Facebook and all that fun stuff from bed. I try to stay in bed until at least 7pm so that I don't wake the kids up before 7am. At 7am the kids start to wake and I make them breakfast and the getting ready routine begins. By 7:50am we are out the door headed to drop off my 1st grader for an 8am start time. My three year old and I head back home and putz around until it's time to drop her off at 9am. This time is usually spent with her having a second breakfast while I respond to emails and catch up on any volunteer work for the school that can be done from home. After I drop off my youngest at preschool I dash back home to gather all of my running supplies, phone, headphones, running belt, recovery drink etc. I then headed back to the 1st graders school to volunteer in the Library for a 1/2 an hour. After I leave the school I head to my local park to hit the trail and get in whatever run I need to get in for the day. In today's case it was 3 miles. After proper recovery, stretching and consuming my recovery beverage I head over to the grocery store to stock up and hit my favorite cafe to grab a latte before heading home to put away all the groceries. At this point I have about 20 minutes left to consume my latte and check more email and Facebook etc. Before I now it's noon and I have to go pick up the three year old to bring her home and make lunch. While she eats lunch I prep my lunch get a call into the hubby where we discuss all of life's important details (because lord knows that can't be done in the evening when the children are vying for his attention) and the consume my lunch. So, here I sit at 1:43pm typing up a quick blog post before we got o pick up my 6 year old at 1:55pm to come back home and do the afternoon snacks and homework routine before I have to start thinking about dinner plans.

Just to note, the 3 year old only goes to preschool on Tuesday and Thursday's, so every other day she's with me. So, yes I'm a SAHM, but no, I don't have a lot of free time on my hands!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

On your own

I've always been a solo type person, I adore my alone time and don't have a problem doing things by myself. Which is probably one of the reasons why I love running, for the most part it's my alone time, my time to actually think about things without being interrupted to handle someone's needs. I spend a lot of time making sure that I take care of my body and try my best to remain injury free by stretching, icing, foam rolling, compression and a bounty of other helpful things. So when I find myself with an unidentified injury and I am trying to make the best decisions for myself, my body and my training to move forward I realized that I felt alone. My sports medicine doctor has a plan that doesn't really work for me. In the past his plans have worked brilliantly for recovery, but this time around I don't have the time to actually follow his plan as I'm in week one of 1/2 Marathon training. I have been super frustrated and trying to find the perfect balance to keep me on track, heal my injury and not make it worse. My Chiropractor was only so much help this time around. In 2010 he kept me healthy and on track through all of my training which was awesome. However, after my last visit it was evident that I wasn't getting what I needed from him either.

It comes down to a muscular injury or a stress fracture, a muscle injury I know I can work with and get through my training, If it's a stress fracture on the hand, I know I need to follow Doctor's orders. Early this week I went in for an x-ray to help me make a more educated decision since I was not getting the support I needed from the medical community. I realize, that a stress fracture may not show up on a normal x-ray, but I also already knew that I wasn't going to push for a bone scan, not worth my time or co-pays. After several phone calls on my part with no return answers from my substitute physician (my primary care doc is on yet another medical leave) I finally got the assistant to eek out an "it looks okay" after reading the x-ray results. That was the answer I needed to run today.

It's been 2 1/2 weeks since I last ran, I've been following doctor's orders on everything else as far as walking, biking and PT exercises. But I most certainly was not going to wait another 2 weeks to test it out. This morning I applied Rock Tape, put on the compression socks and donned my running gear. I headed out to my favorite portion of the local trail so as to not attempt the up and downhill running of my street on my first time out. Since I'm on my own here I decided that 2/2 run/walk intervals seemed like a good place to start, so I set my Forerunner up for those intervals. Surprisingly, I managed to get all three miles in today and I only had one time on my second run interval where I had to slow to a walk for an extra minute. Otherwise, my plan seemed to have work.

I'm not sure if today's efforts gave me enough endorphins to not be a total bitch later today with the family, but hopefully it's a start. I did feel the injury, but it feels much better than the last time I tried to run on it and so far this afternoon, it still feels good. Hopefully it continues to feel that way after I take my compression socks off.

I am hopeful that I can accomplish Sunday's 4 miler in the same fashion. This has been a truly difficult 3 weeks for me. I've learned that while I really like my current physicians I really need a primary care doctor who gets what I am trying to accomplish, I need to feel supported in my decisions, and I need to know that  someone understand why I am making these decisions.

With that in mind, I have an appointment with someone who specializes in ART and athletes, her resume is very impressive and I look forward to seeing how she can help me. Moving forward, I think it's time to find a new primary care physician, I've been seeing him since I was 19, but he has also been on medical leave twice in the past year, forcing me to someone else. I'm hoping that I can find a new primary care  physician that understands my goals and will work with me to best achieve those.

I'll keep plugging away and still hold hope that there is a 1/2 Marathon PR in my future for 2012. 

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Being a good sport

Being sidelined with an injury is hard. My mood has definitely changed over the past 2 weeks, I'm grumpy and frustrated that I am not physically able to do what I want to do. I also know, that if I do what I need to do now that I will heal and be able to run again. That doesn't mean that my brain isn't messing with me. This is supposed to be a big year for me. I'm hoping for PR's across the board in the 5k, 10k and 1/2 Marathon distances. I've achieved my 10k PR but that 1/2 PR is really, really important to me. Am I constantly worrying about how being sidelined right now is going to affect that outcome? Yes, I am. I am also trying to do what I need to do for my body to recover.

This means instead of a 3 mile run today I headed out on a 2 mile walk today and tried to have a good attitude about it. There were several times where I felt that drive to run, but I fought it. I headed out to my favorite section of the Moraga-Lafayette trail this morning to try and get a fairly flat walk. This is me trying to maintain that positive attitude and reminding myself how good walking is for the body!


I really adore this section of the trail, maybe I won't so much when it becomes a part of my longer runs and I'm getting there by running from the house and not driving to the park. It's just so peaceful and pretty here.


I felt really good after the walk. During the walk I felt some definite calf tightness so maybe it is just a really tight muscle and maybe my Chiro can help loosen that up so more tomorrow. I did feel some lower back pain at one point and my Sports Med doc did mention it could be sciatica. I'll continue to do my floor exercises and see if I can strengthen the leg further. My extreme hope it actually be able to run on Tuesday which is technically my first run day of the 1/2 training program. Fingers crossed!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Overuse Injury

These are the two words I don't like to hear. While I have stumped my Sports Medicine Doctor because apparently I'm doing everything correctly (which is nice to know) his best guess is an overuse injury at the 10k. Which have been my thoughts as well so just tell me what I need to do to start running next week!

Okay, perhaps his game plan is not the same as my game plan. I am however, going to do my absolute best to listen carefully and follow his instructions because he has never let me down in the past (1 groin injury and 1 knee injury). His recipe for success calls for walking 2-3 times a week and biking 2 times a week along with a list of floor exercises that I should be doing anyway.

His thought is that by the next time I see him in 2 1/2 weeks I can start run/walk intervals. Hrmpf! Like I said, I'm going to do my best. I'll start by going for a walk right after this post.