Yep, I'm a Slacker

I'm totally post-dating this post. I've been so sidetracked lately that I almost forgot I had a blog. Rest assured, I'm still running!

I made out with the concrete on today's run....no, it didn't feel good and I have no desire to do it again.

I was coming off a downhill on my 2.75 mile loop, so I had a lot of momentum. All of a sudden, I caught my toe on a part of damaged sidewalk. The rest was slow motion:
"oh crap, I'm going to fall"
--frantically trying to throw my center of gravity backwards--
"nope, I can't catch myself, I'm going to fall"
"wait maybe I can......nope...not gonna happen"
--crash--

I fell right on my knee and off to my left side, resulting in a large abrasion on my knee/anterio-lateral shin, a smaller abrasion on my lateral malleolus and a bruise on my left hip. I was holding my cell phone in my hand at the time and it went flying into the road. Thankfully I was able to grab it and there was very little traffic. I had to cut my run short and walk home because I was bleeding and my knee hurt. Thankfully I wasn't that far away. Here are the results in pictures:



So, I'm hoping I can run on this. My knee feels very bruised, I smacked it really good on the concrete) so I'm going to give it a couple days rest then try to run again. I have a 5k race in a week and a half that I *really* want to do.

Stupid sidewalks!

I Can't Say Enough About REST!

Okay, so I fell halfway off the wagon. Bad me.

May 24th I woke up with a cold.....Sneezing, coughing, stuffy nose, misery. I gave myself five days of no running to get over it. After my five days was up, I got lazy. FINALLY I got back to running this past Thursday.

I adjusted my training schedule so that I would start with a nice 1.5 mile run and work my way up from there. Thankfully, I had a couple weeks in my schedule that weren't very important, so it allowed me to take my rest days and not have to worry about catching up before my 5K at the end of the month.

So, Thursday evening I start out on my 1.5 mile run. I decided to take it really easy and not try any drastic speeds or anything. At the end of my run I looked at my Garmin and it showed a pace of 8:52! That's actually the fastest pace I've run since I got back into running!

I have been noticing that as my "long" runs are getting longer, my short runs are getting faster, but I wasn't expecting them to get that fast...especially after not having run for two weeks! In fact, I was expecting the run to feel like misery, but it didn't!

I did another run today; this time 2.25 miles. I forced myself to start out slow, don't want to be expecting any miracles after my 8:52 surprise. I actually ended up running today at a 9:37 pace.

A lot of people, me included, take rest for granted. No matter what I learned in exercise physiology or my strength and conditioning classes, I still don't give rest enough credit. However, after having concrete, personal evidence that rest is beneficial to training, it makes it more of a concrete concept.

I'm back to a normal running schedule next week...and three more weeks until my 5K (first one in three years)!

An Update

Seems I haven't been in the blogging mood since May 17th, so here's an update. I was sick all last week, so I haven't run. I'll start running again tomorrow. Thankfully I have a couple weeks of leeway in my training program, so taking a week off won't set me behind.

The big news: I GOT INTO NURSING SCHOOL!!!!!!!!! I still can't believe it. The odds were stacked against me, because the school only accepts 80 students out of about 630. However, it's apparent that my 4.0 paid off and I didn't do that bad on my interview.

The bigger news: I don't start nursing school until winter quarter 2009 (January). That means I still get to run the half marathon with my sister in San Jose!!!

Everything just fell right into place, it's amazing.

Okay, that's it for now. My husband and I are installing new windows in our condo today....lots of work ahead of us!

The Ultimate Excuse....Damnit

Wow, 3 posts in one day...don't get used to it, I seem to have a lot of time on my hands today.

Now, I don't know if anyone is actually reading this. No one I know reads this, mainly because I haven't given the URL to anyone. Perhaps I will someday. Actually, I know people are reading this because my blog statistic tracker tells me so. Of course, just because someone visits, doesn't mean they read it. Anyway, I digress...

It seems I've run (no pun intended) across the ultimate excuse for not doing my half marathon in October. Actually, it's not an excuse, it's just something that would completely prevent me from going to San Jose to run: getting into nursing school.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's exciting....in fact I'm elated at the possibility. However, nursing schools in the Portland area are so competitive, that I had pretty much decided I wouldn't be accepted this year.

A little background for those of you in blog-land. About a year and a half ago, I finally decided I wanted to be a nurse. I graduated college in 2001 with a B.S. in Kinesiology...completely worthless degree, I don't recommend it. However, I have found that it comes in useful for throwing around completely random facts about exercise physiology or human biomechanics when my friends least expect it. Anyway, I vacillated between physician assistant, MPH, med school (considered for literally 2 seconds), physical therapist and nursing.

So, after finally deciding that nursing was the best course for me, I started on the prerequisites. I took 8 classes over the course of a year and a half while working full time.....and managed to get straight A's. This past winter I started applying to nursing schools. For a variety of reasons, I only applied to two. The first one was a lottery system (if you can breathe and have very minimal prereqs, you can have a lottery entry)...I didn't get chosen, no surprise there. I still had one application out and had decided that the chances were too slim for me to get picked for an interview. The chances based on last years stats were 20% to get an interview.

I got an interview.

150 total students were asked to interview (not sure how many total applicants. Last year there were 638 total applicants). From the 150 they will choose 80 for admission: 40 will start in Fall, 40 will start in Winter. Another 40 will be condemned to the "alternate" list. That means that if I do get in and have to start in the Fall, I will not be able to fly to San Jose to participate in the half marathon.....sadness. So, the best I can hope for is a Winter admission (or no admission, but I'm very confident that I'll get in based on many factors).

Anyway, my interview is scheduled for 5/20 and I should know the results by 6/2. My fingers are crossed that this won't prevent me from doing my half marathon. However, if I do get Fall admission, I will probably pick a half marathon here in Oregon...I just won't get to run with my sister.

This is Oregon, Not Arizona!

Mother nature always has a problem figuring out what to do with the weather in Oregon. Perhaps that's why it was snowing just a month ago, and now it's 96 degrees!

What happened to Spring?

I spent all of yesterday at work in a nice air conditioned medical office, knowing very well that I had to go run after work. After I got home I tried to wait as long as possible without being out in the dark. I think I set out on my run about 8:00pm and it had cooled down to a balmy 85 degrees. Ugh. I wasn't expecting any miracles, my goal was just to finish the run without collapsing from heat stroke, and thankfully it was a short one (only 1.5 miles). It took a lot of mental pushing, but I did finish the run without collapsing (although I was completely drenched in sweat), and oddly enough, I ran at a pace of 9:30/mi....fastest since I started tracking workouts on my Garmin. I'll take it!

This evening I'm switching it up a little bit and meeting my friend in downtown Portland to run along the Willamette River. The forecast still calls for hot weather today, but not as hot as yesterday and hopefully it will be cooler by the river.

Shiny New Shoes

After going on my run a couple of Friday's ago, it finally dawned on me that I needed new shoes when I started sprouting a blister on one of my arches. That's okay, I needed an excuse to get new shoes anyway.

So, that weekend, I dragged my husband to Fit Right NW (a local running store) and had them do a video-taped analysis of my running. It was quite the learning experience; I've never had the chance to see a slow-motion video of my feet when I run. I learned two things:

1) I don't overpronate as badly as I thought I did. During midstance, you can clearly see my arch collapsing more than it should, but not enough to warrant the "tanks" I was wearing on my feet (Brooks Ariel -- the Cadillac of motion control shoes).

2) I splay my feet slightly during midstance but toe-off normally.

So, the good news of course was that I didn't need any heavy-duty motion control shoes and I could get something that was more intermediate (and much lighter).

After trying several different shoes, I finally settled on the Mizuno Wave Inspire 4, and I LOVE THEM! They are so much more comfortable and lighter than my older shoes....and I haven't had any odd foot pains.

I'm Still on the Wagon!

Haven't fallen off yet! In fact, only two weeks into my training, I'm already back to that old "running addiction" feeling.

Sunday was my cross-training day, so my husband and I went and did a nice 3.5 mile hike in the gorge. It was our first hike of the spring/summer hiking season and it was a beautiful day! No more hiking for me until I get new hiking shoes though. The one's I currently have are older and gave me a gigantic blister on the back of my left heel. No exaggeration necessary, that sucker was about 1.5 inches long and .75 inches high. Said blister popped during the hike and was infected by Monday (despite being carefully cleaned and covered). I worked a 10-hour shift at work on Monday and could barely walk by the end of my shift. I had to call my husband and ask if he could leave work early to come and pick me up...which he was kind enough to do.

I spent the rest of the evening on the couch with my leg elevated and the blister on ice (I'm pretty good at being a wuss). By the time I went to bed it had already started to feel better...although it remains to be seen if it was the elevation and ice or the beer that made it better. The next day it was still a pussy mess, but I could walk on it. I cleaned and covered it again with copious amounts of Neosporin and a bandage. By the end of work that day, it had already started to heal.

I opted to forgo my run on Tuesday to allow the blister more time to heal. Yesterday it was almost completely healed, so I started my running again. Still felt pretty great and I actually ran at a faster pace than my previous run on Saturday.

No more evil hiking shoes. Time to get new ones.