starting the season off right...

it's raining.

i'm packing to move.

i have the pre-Christmas (far away from family and friends) blues.

finding it hard to get out running.

but Kick-off is just around the corner! time to give myself a kick in the butt so that when we have our first group training run in 9 days, i won't be huffing and puffing my way through a three mile run.

but first, i'm going to try to pack a few more boxes, just in case the rain lets up a little later on....

(master procrastinator that i am!)

first run of the new season...

it's hard to believe that this time last year i was humming and hawing over whether or not to join Team In Training... it has been come such an integral part of my social life that i can't imagine being here and not being involved!

even though Spring 2010 Season has not yet officially kicked off.... a bunch of us got up early this morning and headed out to Reston for a pre-season run together. and it was so great!!

we had a great turn out, people were excited, i got to meet a couple of my mentees, got to see some friends from last Spring Season.... and the weather was nice and cool. (so glad not to be training in the heat anymore!!)

am now looking forward to kick-off in a couple week.... even though it also just happens to be the same weekend we'll be moving into our new home! BIG WEEKEND!!!

so today, i'm plotting my next fundraising initiative... and packing. whee!!

recruiting is big on my agenda these days...

so, now that i'm all set up as a mentor for spring season, i'm trying to get some of the easiest mentor obligations out of the way so that i'm not trying to cram them in when we're in the thick of the really long runs and madly trying to reach fundraising deadlines.

last night i was at a TNT info meeting... it was pouring rain, there were oodles of accidents and sirens and flashing lights... and the bus was late. but i made it in the end... me and more staff and volunteers than potential participants... but of the 8 that showed up, 5 signed up right away... and the others went away saying things like "i just need to check with my husband.." so we could still get one or two of them on board.

the night before last i spent a few hours in the TNT office making calls to people who had expressed even the remotest bit of interest in joining over years past... had a few people ask me to take them off the list... got a lot of answering machines... but a couple people said that yes they were interested and to please send them details on upcoming info nights. wooppeee!

feeling so productive!

and in other recruiting news...

i've started fundraising, and i started my efforts by recruiting my friends to ask their friends to sponsor me... you know, since i've already asked them all for the last two seasons.... time to move on to the friends of friends.

i just sent that e-mail out yesterday, and already i've received two donations!

(Thank you, Cecile... you too, Dave!!)

feel free to spread the word on my behalf.

it's official

i got the green light from my physiotherapist to start running this week.... no more than a couple miles, he said. and if that goes well, we'll work our way up week by week. so i'm headed out for a run with my old teammate Ronda tomorrow morning early (just to keep myself mentally ready for the fact that the alarm will ring early every Saturday morning from the beginning of December until the end of April.... that's a long time to go without a sleep in!!)

last night was the first meeting for the Spring Season mentors and coaches. i won't be the mission mentor this time around, as my friend Sara scooped me on that one! but i will be a regular mentor, and that will be just fine too :o)

so here's the plan...

as you know, i had to defer my race plans for Marine Corps Marathon due to injury. so all the fundraising that i did for that event will go to meet my fundraising goals to run the National Marathon here in DC in March... although i will likely just do the half marathon, as i've also signed on to fundraise for and run the Nashville Country Music Marathon in April!!!

very excited.

wondering if i'll be able to run it in my finest cowgirl finery and some fancy boots?? or if i should just stick to the TNT purple singlet and my favourite running shoes... will give that some thought over the next five months.

haven't been here in a while...

since i injured my right knee and had to come to terms with the fact that i would not recover in time to run the Marine Corps Marathon, i have not much felt like writing.

physio starts tomorrow, so after that i should have some idea how long it is going to take before i'm back to running regularly... and ready to decide which race to take on next.

Marine Corps Marathon allowed me to defer my entry to next year, but that's a whole year away... so i'm going to aim to do another Team In Training event in the spring.

this means (to your great delight, i am certain) that this blog shall carry on into season three of training for marathons and fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma

Society. aren't you thrilled?

i knew you would be...

until tomorrow then, when i shall give you the complete knee recovery update... i leave you with some photos from yesterday's

Marine Corps Marathon... I cheered for the first runner through until the very last runner through.... 6.5 hours on the course, around mile 23.

so, it's been a while... again

i have been avoiding writing this particular post... call it denial if you like.

so, last time i wrote i was recovering from torticollis. and one week later i was suffering from mysterious pains in my thigh... not quite the knee, not quite the groin, but something that radiated from the knee-ish area upward to the groin-ish area and across the front of my thigh.

so, after a few days of icing and ibuprofen and no running, i went for a test run to see if it was any better... and barely made it ten paces before i had to stop.

then i went to see the doctor, who couldn't quite be sure what the problem was because it didn't quite fit any of the typical muscle injuries that she was aware of... she referred me to the sports medicine clinic... however it took a week to get an appointment to see the sports med docs, and in the mean time i was told to have some x-rays done, oh.. and no running.

finally got to see the sports med guys yesterday... so it has now been a little over two weeks since my last run. for the most part, my leg's not bothering me... except when i forget and do things like dash across the road to avoid oncoming traffic... then it hurts.

so, sports med doc number one pokes and prods and twists and hmmms for a while... looks over the x-ray results which say that aside from slight indications of the beginnings of osteo-arthritis in my right hip, there's nothing to see... then he calls in someone else to help him out.

new guys pokes and prods and stretches and twists a little more vigorously until he hits a spot well below my knee that causes me to yelp loudly as i pretty near pierce the examining table with my clenching hands and feel like i'm going to throw up.

then he breaks out the ultra-sound machine and his handy bottle of blue goo.... and we take a look inside my leg. very cool...

and there it is, clear as day... a tear in my sartorius muscle, below the knee... no where near where i have been feeling pain all this time.

and thus have i been introduced to the mysterious concept called "referred pain."

no fun.

so now i'm wearing a knee brace and am scheduled to start physio some time this week.

however, even if the physio and brace miraculously cure what ails me within the next week or so, i will not be able to make up all the time i have lost... and i will not be ready to run the Marine Corps Marathon in 4 weeks time.

i will continue to support my team in their training, and will cheer them on come race day.

i have deferred my registration in the marathon until next year (so i will still run it!! just not this year...). and all of the money i have raised so far will still go to support the work of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

thanks for all your support.

poor me, yay me!

so... about two weeks ago i woke up with a stiff neck.

five days, much ibuprofen and ice packs and heating pads and a massage later... i wound up in the emergency room getting grilled by the intake nurse about how many of the symptoms of meningitis i had been ignoring for five days.

fortunately, in the end i didn't have meningitis... even though i did have a lot of the symptoms.

i had torticollis (persistant and painful muscle spasm in neck and shoulder).... so they sent me home with some hefty narcotics... and i slept for four days.

upon awakening from my drug induced stupor, i found i could at last tilt my head enough to drink from a glass again... and look from side to side with no pain.

and have since set about trying to catch up on 9 missed days of running.

it's amazing how hard it is to gain fitness and how easy it is to lose it.

i had run 14 miles with little distress a few weeks ago, and now i'm struggling to do 10 again...

sigh.

trying to remain patient with myself.

and, i have enough time to make it up before my race.