"Fit Girl" vs. The Chinese Buffet

Most of the time, the ideas for my blogs come to me as I’m in the middle of whatever it is that I’m going to write about: drowning in a lake, dive bombing down a mountain on my bike while praying that I don’t wipe out at the bottom, stuff like that.  Every now and then, though, I write my blog in my head well before the actual thing that I’m writing about even happens. 

This week’s blog was going to be one of those pre-written ones.  I was going talk about how much more confident I felt about my rather busy race season with one big race under my belt.  I was going to talk about how the MORE/Fitness Half marathon was just a month after the NYC Half that I ran last week, so all I was going to do was rewind my training plan by a month and replay those last 4 weeks of it again.  The first two of those weeks are the ones with the most mileage in the plan, so for today’s blog I was going to discuss how I ate up my 5, 8 and 10 mile runs this week like they were M & Ms.

So, here goes: this week, the one with the second heaviest amount of mileage in my entire training plan, I ran – 2 miles.  I know; I run more than 2 miles on my rest days.  So, what happened?  Well, here’s the thing.  I don’t really know.  About a month ago I turned my left ankle while I was on a training run, probably that first version of that 10 miler I was supposed to repeat today.  It hurt for a few minutes, but I quickly forgot about it.  Later that night it bothered me a little, but not even enough to get sympathy points from my husband, Wil, or to allow me to yell out things like, “Honey, can you come here?  I can’t reach the remote!”  Then last Sunday I ran the NYC Half, and thought I finally got my vengeance on a race that has always been tricky for me.  Wrong.

For those who read last week’s blog, you know that it was so cold that my feet got numb waiting for the race to start, and I couldn’t feel them for the first 3 miles (and for those who didn’t read it, you should.  It was a truly brilliant piece of writing :-).  When I got home from that race I was sore, but figured it was just because I was so cold when I started that I didn’t warm up properly.  Two days later my muscles were fine, but my left foot was hurting, so instead of the 5 mile run I decided to just run 2 miles on the treadmill and then take the Cardio Sculpt class at the gym.  My foot hurt running, but of course I ignored it.  During the class, my instructor, Bob – who is the nicest guy outside of class but during it spends the entire 60 minutes trying to kill us all slowly – had us doing stuff involving jumping the whole time, and by the end I had trouble just walking. The next day I finally gave into the pain and went to the doctor.  She diagnosed me with an ankle sprain that likely started on that run a few weeks before, and that I probably exacerbated while I thought I was beating the NYC Half but in reality was getting my ass (or ankle) handed to me.  My foot has been taped for days, and my running has come to a screeching halt.

Now I bet you’re expecting this blog to be about how since I got hurt right at the beginning of my race season that I let “Fat Girl” take over, and I have tossed the entire thing away in favor of a Wendy’s Bacon Double Classic and a large Frosty (and Wendy, if you’re reading this I just want you to know that I miss you and you will always hold a place in my heart.  We just really weren’t good for each other).  Well, you couldn’t be more wrong.  Yes, I’m injured and I can’t run right now. I admit I’m worried about my next half marathon, but I’m not letting “Fat Girl” take me out to an all you can eat Chinese buffet (and to the Chinese buffet, I miss you, too).  But, I know what to do.  I’ve been replacing my land runs with deep water runs, which are only slightly less interesting than watching wet paint dry. 

I am “Fit Girl”. I am confident about this race season, even with this bump in the road.  I am going to toe the line at the MORE/Fitness Half Marathon as fit and healthy as possible.  I have to; I’ve already written a bunch of blogs in my head about drowning in lakes and dive bombing down mountains on my bike.