starting to struggle

so it’s obviously been a long time since i last updated.  let me think… the saturday after the 6 miler, i was going to be snowboarding in colorado and if i didn’t do the 8 miler on my own, i’d have to do TEN miles the saturday after my trip.  sooo, i got up extra early on thursday morning to run the 8 miles on my own. something i learned: running by yourself is no bueno.  i ran through river oaks and i assumed that it wouldn’t be too bad, but it was fairly dark for the first hr of my run and i was pretty paranoid…. soooo, i will prolly never run by myself ever again.  its no fun either.  

ok, so i did the 8 miles without too much of a struggle, it was a challenge but i def felt great afterwards like always!  i went snowboarding that weekend (it was my first time ever) and unfortunately, at the beginning of day 2, i took a pretty bad spill face first into the snow and hurt my chest pretty badly.  after going to the dr when i got back home, her diagnosis was a hematoma in my spleen.  it sounds bad, but it really isn’t.  it’s basically just a bruise on my spleen.  she said that it would just dissipate back into my body on its own and the best we can do is get a CT scan now and another in a month to make sure that it is getting smaller.  i’m not that worried about it, and the dr said that it can’t get any worse with my running, so no worries there either.

ok, so i was in a pretty good amount of pain that week i got back so i didnt do any of my maintenance runs during the week.  at all.  the saturday came for the big jump into the double digits, and i did make it out and i did complete that!  it was amazingly much better than the week previous.  for the 8 miles, i ran a 4/1, but for the 10 miles, i was a little worried about my spleen so i thought it might be best if i scaled back to a 3/1 and for whatever reason, i ran the 10 miles faster than the 8 miles the week before!  it felt amazing.  

so, the weather turned pretty sour the week following that 1o miler and i was extremely EXTREMELY busy at work/school, so i missed ALL of my maintenance runs AGAIN.  (bad, i know)  to make matters worse, i completely skipped the long run the following saturday.  (it was only the first one i have ever missed)  i did learn something from that absence…  i completely missed it.  my saturday felt so unproductive and terrible because i didnt run that morning!  it was horrible.  i felt pretty sluggish the entire day.  i guess it was good so now i know not to miss anymore of those saturday long runs!

ok, so now we’re all pretty caught up.  yesterday, we did our run by time instead of distance.  this means that the full marathoners were to run out for an HOUR then turn around and come back.  it was def one of my harder runs because 1) my running buddy wasn’t there and 2) i didn’t even make it to the water stop, i think our coaches over estimated some of us and put it out too far.  all in all, it wasn’t too bad.  it just felt good to get out there again.  after our run, a nutritionist came and talked to us about how important it was to fill our bodies with good, healthy food!  apparently, it’s quite important for 60-70% of our caloric intake be from carbohydrates.  what we did learn was that the term carbohydrate is much broader than most people think.  it is not just limited to those starchy carbs that everyone knows about (pastas, breads, potatoes)  but it also includes things like fruits and veggies and dairy!  it was quite informative and starting today, i will begin a food diary to keep track of what exactly i am putting into my body.  i guess it’s important to understand what you are doing before you can correct it?  i have already been trying to be more conscious about what foods i eat, so i’m hoping that i won’t be too surprised about what i find out.

ok, this one was a long post!  i have a ton of things going on at work so i’m hoping to keep up with this as well as i can and i vow to do all my runs this week!  yay!  GO TEAM!