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Posts from the ‘Disappointments’ Category

A not-so-subtle reminder

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I haven’t really talked about my broken arm since the doctor gave me an “all clear” weeks ago. The mobility is far better than it was. It feels, mostly, normal. In fact, it really doesn’t bother me most the time.

Then I get a not-so-subtle reminder that it’s not quite at full operating capacity.

It usually comes when I’m in the middle of a cross-training activity. It starts as a dull pain at the site of the fracture. It’s not really noticeable at first. Then there’s a feeling of faint pressure. It’s followed by an all-at-once feeling that something is tearing the bone apart from the inside.

Needless to say, I’m not healed completely.

I can’t even do a 30-minute Jillian Michaels workout video with my friend Sam without saying “nope, can’t do this one” when we get to a move that would involve my left elbow.

I knew this would be the case.

The doctor didn’t promise me a miracle healing or even guarantee that I’d be back to my normal, push-up able self within a month. He said it would take time. He also advised me not to push as much pressure on it as I would my right arm.

So when Michaels instructs Sam and I go into a cobra position (or whatever it is, I don’t know, that 30-minutes kicks my butt), I shouldn’t be getting as much into it as I am. But I tend to push things like this a little far.

I think my arm is better. The truth is, it’s not.

In fact, the doctor told me to watch out when I run even more so because the likelihood is that if I fall on that same spot again, which I’d likely do because my luck is that great, I could completely fracture my radial head all over again.

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Doesn’t it look all healed up and unsuspecting? The pressure in that stupid little bone is ridiculously painful. I’ve never experienced “pressure” pain before. When it gets really bad, I turned to my “breakthrough-only” Ibuprofen. That’s pretty bad.

Even better, apparently I haven’t learned my lesson from all of the doctor visits, the week of a sling and the inability to move my arm completely for more than a month.

As Jennie and I were finishing up our six-mile run today, we were back into the neighborhood area where we run in front of houses. About four miles of our run twist down tree-lined paths by my house. The neighborhoods are basically at the beginning and end of the run as we make our way back to my house.

“I try to avoid these since you fell,” she said to me, gesturing down at a lip of a driveway.

Of course, I turned around. And looked down. As I was running.

Basically, I did all of the things I did when I fell in March. I didn’t fall tonight. But it made me realize a couple things: 1) I didn’t even realize that I had fallen over a lip of a driveway, but now that I think about it, yeah, that’s what happen. 2) I really should start paying more attention to the sidewalk while I’m running.

When time works for and against you

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When I was in the middle of intensive counseling sessions last fall, my therapist told me to write down a list of things I couldn’t control. Want a lesson in humility? Make that list.

You’ll end up realizing that you can’t control anything. You’ll want to give up, buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream and eat it while watching afternoon talk shows (Ricki Lake has a show again, who knew?). At least that’s what I did. Months later, I’m not ashamed of it. The ice cream was good. And my soul needed more soothing that I realized.

I still have my list. The third item down is “time.”

I can’t control time. Because it keeps ticking away. Because there’s always a sun up and a sun down (unless you were the dinosaurs, as one of my students pointed out to me recently). Time just moves. You either embrace the temporal moments as just that or you let some bad drag you down.

Five weeks ago today I fell hard on my left side while trying to get in my 15-mile run for this marathon training cycle. It laid me up for two weeks. Three weeks ago, I finally did that run. On my treadmill. I also ended up in the doctor’s office being properly diagnosed with a fractured radial head.

This training cycle, I didn’t do a 20-mile run. I didn’t even do an 18-mile run.

Two half marathons, one 10K, various eight and 10 milers, but no marathon-standard runs.

And I’m running a marathon this weekend.

Time. It just kept moving.

When I ended up in the hospital in January, I wondered if I’d even make it to the start line in San Luis Obispo. My husband and I did a lot of talking in the hospital. We had conversations both of us had been avoiding, or hoping we wouldn’t have to have. They concerned work. Money. Running. Happiness.

I worried more about the 10K I’d be giving up than the marathon. I’d be fine by the marathon, right? I don’t even know how to define “fine” anymore.

Three weeks ago, sitting in my doctor’s office, I was more concerned about the Oakland Half than SLO. I PRed in Oakland.

In that time, my arm has become stronger. I’m able to bend more, but still not put a lot of pressure on it. I’m able to do some of the things I couldn’t before. And I’m grateful, because time helped that. I didn’t think it would ever be better. I was convinced I was going to walk around with T-Rex arm for life.

But I was back in Modesto getting my arm looked at today. The stiffness is causing the pain. I need to regain mobility. The fracture has healed nicely so far. (See image above, where the cursor is pointing? That’s where the crack was. I took the photo for my husband.) Time healed.

Runners say that by the time you get a week out from a marathon, there’s really nothing you can do that will prepare you more. Taper. Stay off your legs. Get your gear assembled. But don’t go crazy. This past week, I kept wishing for more time. In the middle of multi-hour meetings, looming deadlines and prep to take my students to a journalism conference out of town next week, I needed a minute or two extra. Something. Anything.

The reality is that I was wishing and wanting more time to feel better about this marathon. I guess I could just not run it. But my husband doesn’t really give me that option anymore. (You know the meme that says “you had one job…” where someone messes something up even though that’s all they had to do? I kind of feel like that. I have one job on race day, and that’s to run my ass off.)

Nerves? Anxiety? Yes. Always now. But if I had four more weeks, two more weeks, I know I’d be better for it.

Tomorrow we hop in the car early and head the 3+ hours to San Luis Obispo. We’ll be staying in Morro Bay, where my husband has family. The good news is that this course has an eight-hour limit. The bad news is that last year’s finishers mostly came in well ahead of that. I’m just hoping I’m not too alone out there on the course.

‘Tell me where it hurts’

Remember when I was absolutely certain that I didn’t have a broken arm? It wasn’t swollen. It was starting to feel better. The advice nurse told me that it didn’t sound broken. To be fair, she also told me to follow up with a actual doctor’s appointment, but I didn’t bother for another week.

That appointment was today.

I had to twist my arm and basically show everyone “where it hurt” like I was a five years old and had a stomachache that wouldn’t go away. But in actuality, I kind of had to tell them a lot since it was so far after the fact.

I left the office thinking that it was exactly what everyone thought it was: a trauma-induced muscle strain.

At 6 p.m. my doctor told me and said it looked like there was a fracture.

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I’m officially broken.

There’s supposedly a hairline fracture in there somewhere in my radial bone. I’m being referred to an orthopedic doctor in Stockton at some point in the next few days. (See what happens when I can’t use one of my arms? I have crazy hair. Just absolutely a mess crazy hair. This isn’t even as bad as it was two weeks ago when all of this first happened. My husband had to do my hair. I’ll let you imagine just what that looked like. It was bad.)

So I need to apply ice, wrap it for compression and wear a sling. Then the orthopedic doctor can decide what, if anything, we can do to fix me.

For the record, I’m tired of needing to be fixed. I’m still tired of doctors. Today’s visit was with my third primary-care physician in eight months. I’m not feeling as anxious about this insurance change as I thought I would (we switched to Kaiser coverage with my husband at the beginning of February after four-plus years with a PPO), but I’m still annoyed.

I’m thinking I’m not as apprehensive because I’ve approached the last three months of my life with a “rip off the Band-Aid” quick rule. Make a break. Get away. Be done. Move on. And it’s working, outside of the fact I keep hurting myself and ending up in doctor’s offices where I have to explain everything that’s happened to me since October.

I feel like I’m in a group therapy session: “Hi, my name is Tara and I fell apart in October to the point that I was having nightmares about my coworkers at my full-time job killing me at my desk. I also cried and hyperventilated every time I thought of walking into that place of employment. In January they fired me via email, then let me resign, after I tried to go back to work but apparently became a problem. I’d devoted more than a decade to that company. And yet, when it all went down, I was just glad I didn’t have to walk through those doors again. I’m better now. My life is fuller now. I run a lot more now. My husband says I’m happier. The whole episode made my mom cry. I never wanted to make my mom cry. Questions?”

I think that’s the first time I put that out on my blog. Again, rip the Band-Aid quickly.

I know what you’re thinking: “OH MY GOD, SHE WENT CRAZY AND NOW SHE SAYS SHE’S FINE! CRAZY PEOPLE SAY THAT!”

In actuality, I’ve been off my anxiety medication since the moment I left that job. I haven’t had any issues with depression since then either. It’s taking a lot for me to write that, especially since there’s such a stigma around mental illness.

If I wasn’t better, I wouldn’t be making fun of it. If I wasn’t better, I wouldn’t be writing it.

Those who were supporting me feel as if it was limited to one particular place, over a period of time. If they knew then what they know now, a concerted effort would have been made to get me out of the situation I was in a lot sooner. I’m grateful for what I learned in the process of losing myself, then finding my way back, but it also made me very aware of the limited resources for dealing with these sorts of problems in my area.

Everybody tells you to “talk to someone.” No one tells you where to go next. It’s not like having a broken arm. You can’t splint it and send a patient on their way.

For months instead of telling someone where it hurt, I was telling someone (an incredibly good therapist) about all the stupid little things that scared me. For two weeks, I couldn’t even put gas in my car because I was so overwhelmed by the motions involved in it. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted anymore. The nightmares were the worst. They manifested as terrors, feeling so real I was afraid to go to bed. When I went back to work the people who were in those nightmares were literally sitting right on top of me.

“This will make you a stronger person,” my running buddy and good friend Jennie once said to me. “Things like this happen for a reason.”

It has. It’s also made me very aware of the signs when someone is falling apart at the seams. I was falling apart. For months. There were people who saw me everyday, my family included, who could have helped. No one knew what to do. I needed an intervention. Instead, I had a breakdown.

I won’t even start on the fact that after four years and multiple emergency room visits it was only this year my medical providers caught my very sick, very angry gallbladder and removed it.

After all that, can you imagine how I feel about doctor’s offices?

But today went fine.

I got in. I had an X-ray. I went back to see the doctor. She prescribed me some extra-strength Ibuprofen. I filled out paperwork to transfer my oodles of medical records from as of late. Then I went home…only to get the call as I was getting dressed to run, all full of myself for NOT having a broken arm and being stupid enough to walk around with it for nearly two weeks.

That’s karma folks. It bites you right in the butt all the time.

I wanted to be upset, but I’m kind of just rolling with it.

Today, when the doctor’s assistant brought me back she told he she had to put me in the “vibrating room.” I looked at her suspiciously. But she was serious. The room sits above the engine room on the first floor. I would have shot video of everything vibrating, all the medical tools and what not, but I kept thinking the doctor would come in.

I did get this gem:

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I imagined how many people thought of being a superhero when they saw this drawer. I laughed, out loud, in the vibrating room while thinking about it.

I didn’t know my arm was broken when I left, but I still felt as if everything in the world was set right again after a good visit with the doctor. Even after getting the call and email from my new primary-care physician, I realized it could be a hell of a lot worse.

Right?

I’m rejoicing today because, unlike some things, a broken arm can so easily be fixed.

Protecting prized possessions

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Last fall, in the middle of everything that went south in my life, one of my friends lost most of her home to a fire. It started with a laptop charger. The resulting damage is so much that she’s been forced out of her home for probably as long as a year. She lost nearly everything in the fire.

The little that was salvageable was whatever doesn’t reek of charred remains. We were talking the other day and she mentioned her race mementos: medals and shirts included.

Then she prompted me: Imagine, if everything was suddenly gone. She knows of my vast collection of race bibs adorning my home office walls, right next to my medals and my college and graduate school degrees.

“All your bibs,” she said.

I’d like to think we have protection for that sort of thing, at least to some degree. In 2008, my husband and I purchased a safe after our then rental home was broken into. It happened less than 10 days before Christmas. Our dead-bolt locks were kicked in, as was part of our fence. My dog Sky and I came home to massive footprints on our kicked-in doors, not knowing if someone was in the house.

Because I’m ballsy and a little stupid, I walked in with my husband’s ice ax prepared to greet the intruder.

I called the police.

They told me not to go in. I did anyway. (Again, ballsy and stupid.)

I found all of my jewelry gone. And two bottles of malt liquor. And some cheese. The presents, all wrapped, were still intact. Gone was a backpack, our video camera and every piece of jewelry I’d collected in my adult life.

I was devastated by one piece in particular: my antique engagement ring from my grandmother.

Long story short: Our insurance settled with us for nearly $5,000 in goods. But my high school class ring, numerous necklaces given to me as gifts and my first set of pearls my mom bought me were all gone.

So we bought the safe. And two more dogs. (A couple years ago, burglars were casing houses in my town by knocking on doors. If they heard a dog bark, they’d go on to the next house.)

It gives me solace, but very little when I think about the sense of loss and violation that I felt after our items were taken.

Which brings me to something as simple as a race bib.

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I have them all on a wall in my office. Yesterday, I removed nearly half of them and placed them in a folder for safekeeping. And literally safekeeping. My intention is to put them in our fireproof safe.

It’s made me start to thinking about other memorabilia I have from running (and everything else I consider irreplaceable in my home) and how I wouldn’t be able to replace any of those items.

So I’m trying to figure out what to do with some of these items, specially ones I consider incredibly dear. My first marathon medal? I can’t replace that. Some of my favorite running shirts? Very few race organizers have extras years after it happens. And how would you go about replacing items from races all at once? That seems impossible.

I once saw a runner ask Big Sur International Marathon officials on the organization’s Facebook page if they had any extra medals because one was damages. BSIM is incredibly good about getting back to people. And race officials did, saying they had extras and they’d send one along. But I know other organizations give them away. California International Marathon donates the previous year’s medals to children who participate in a charity run the next year. One race I did ran out of the medal, meaning the organizers likely didn’t order all that many extras the second time around.

A race bib is probably the least of my worries if something like this happens, right?

Yes.

But bibs are one of those things that I’d likely look back on and say: “Wow, I wish I still had that.”

Especially fond memories. Like my first marathon.

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I don’t want to lose any of my mementos from that race. It was a defining experience for me.

So I wonder what to do next with items like this, as opposed to just putting them in a fireproof safe. Is there something more? Should I scour Pinterest and find of what crafty people would do with race bibs and medals?

The ideas I’m found doesn’t include protecting items like this against disasters. Most just show you how to frame or display them, not really how to preserve something so prized.

About that clothing fast

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About that clothing fast? I’m really glad I made an exception for socks. This is now the second pair of socks my big toes have demolished in a three week period.

You see the little nail popping out there? It’s a little black still. Actually it’s more than a little black. It looks better than it did a couple weeks ago, but it’s not pretty either.

clothes3To be fair, these socks are about a year old. I don’t replace them as regularly as they tell me to at my local running store, but at $12 a pair they are really expensive. I only spend about $1 a pair on my regular socks at Target. I’m nowhere near fancy.

I’m now used to the questions I get asked about why I buy “special” clothes for running. Why the socks? Why the capris? Why the shirts? Why bother at all?

After a disastrous half marathon where my feet were rubbed raw from a bad pair of non-running socks, I decided it wasn’t worth the pain anymore. I had never owned running socks prior to that. I figured my $1 Target socks were decent enough to push me through a run. Nope.

Now I need a new pair. These ones will get stitched up and used for everyday wear. (I can’t use them for running once I sew them. They tend to bunch up in the toe and can cause more pain, especially in feet prone to black toenails, like me.)

It looks like I’ll be in the market for some running socks.

A new emergency, complete with surgery

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That whole post about bad luck? It just keeps getting worse.

The culmination of it all was an emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder (yes, the whole freaking thing) and a gallstone the size of a quarter from my body on Wednesday morning.

Let me go back to Jan. 1.

That emergency room trip where the CT scan showed nothing? Where blood tests were inconclusive?

I was sent home, that night, after being loaded up with painkillers. The good painkillers, not the ones that make me feel like I’m on fire (looking at you Morphine). I was also prescribed a bottle of Vicodin and some anti-nausea medication. Good thing too, because I had to keep taking it.

I can’t even begin to describe the pain I feel when it happens. It starts dull, then radiates throughout my abdomen. Then my stomach seems to get bloated. Last week, I couldn’t wear my jeans. It was that bad. And when all is said and done, it passes. Like nothing. It usually only lasts a night or so, then I’m back at it.

But this time, the pain stuck around. I noticed it when I was shooting a video on Thursday of last week. As I sat on the floor, something I usually do when shooting video. I all of the sudden had a sharp pain in my side. Then I felt a little sick. I was able to finish the video without any other incident.

On Saturday, it felt like it was kicking up again. By Monday, I was harboring a dull pain as I went throughout my day. I’ve been dealing with this since graduate school. Doctors first diagnosed me with an ulcer. That was a lucky guess … because I ended up having a pretty gnarly ulcer. My husband rushed me to the ER the year we got married after I could barely stand up. Then doctors said it was kidney stones. In 2010, I had surgery to look for “lady problems” that could be causing the pain.

Another doctor told me I needed to lose some weight. I proceeded forward with that. Thirty-pounds lighter, the pain came back.

And it kept coming, until Tuesday when, at another video assignment, it was full blown. Just crazy bad. Tuesday ended for me in a way that I should have predicted a few weeks ago when I decided to go back to work, except in the real-life version I was called self absorbed. (Not for this post.)

I came home upset Tuesday night. I took a Xanax to calm down. I fell asleep fast.

By midnight, I was wide awake trying to get the pain to pass again. I tried to go to the bathroom. I drank water, a ton of water. I used the heating pad. I took a shower. I did everything.

Then I started throwing up. Everything. Nothing stayed down. (Even that $10, super delicious Togo’s sandwich. Damn.)

So at 4 a.m., I woke my husband up by collapsing on our bedroom floor.

“I’m dying,” I cried.

“You’re not dying,” he said.

But he couldn’t deny I was in pain.

It took them an hour to get me painkillers. I hadn’t even had time, since the previous visit, to check in with my regular physician. This time, the emergency room doctor (a really young looking guy), ordered up a CT with contrast.

Less than 30 minutes later, he was back in my ER bay telling me by gallbladder looked inflamed. He brought in an ultrasound machine. He felt around. He said he wanted to consult the surgeon.

By 9 a.m. I was being wheeled into the surgery room to have my gallbladder removed.

I woke up in recovery, still dazed about all that had transpired in less than 12 hours.

And greeted by a clear liquid diet.

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Chicken broth. Jello. Yum. I also got juice. No carbonated beverages, though. Apparently, I may not be able to drink carbonated beverages for a while now.

Oh, and new holes all over my abdomen. I felt like a human pincushion.

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That’s what I look like after having a organ removed. And being put under general anesthesia. And being hooked up to a major massive IV delivering more painkillers.

So I’m sans gallbladder. My husband was right: I wasn’t dying.

But I’m not supposed to lift anything more than 15 pounds for the next month. I have an awesome sheet full of lots of fun doctor orders. No this. No that. No running. For at least two weeks.

So that 10K I was so jazzed about? Not happening, according to my husband. It’s only 16 days away. He wants me to contact the race company and transfer my entry to another event. I’ll get around to it, when I have a moment of clarity without the pain medication. (Like right now, when I’m not nearly as groggy as I thought I’d be.)

I’m trying not to be iffy about my half marathon in February, but you never know about these things. I’m in a lot of pain right now. I can barely stay awake for more than three hours, apparently a result of being put under.

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That was my view for the day/night. The night was ridiculous. There was no way I could get a good night’s rest. I had nurses coming in every two hours to check my vitals and make sure I was still alive. If they hadn’t have kept giving me pain medication, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to sleep.

One of the orderlys was really nice, though. She saw I was having trouble navigating something simple like opening up a sugar packet, for my tea, and she offered to make it for me.

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I nearly cried when she left. Lately I’ve been greeted with questioning looks and doubtful smiles. This woman was genuinely nice to me. She even opened up my napkin and put it on my lap. Why can’t more people be like that? (I may sound cheesy right now, but I’m had a hellish three weeks that has made me question nearly everything I knew about friendship and proper decorum.)

I kept getting zonked out with the IV painkillers.

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That little bag was both my friend and my enemy. They had to remove the original IV from my right hand and move it to my left late last night because the original one had saturated my arm. Every time my nurse “flushed” the line, it burned.

This morning, my husband came and bailed me out. We only live right down the street from the hospital, but the trip felt long. I really just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. When I finally did, I fell fast asleep.

I’m a little hunched over when I walk now. And the pain is still radiating, but this time I know it’s from the holes, not the gigantic gallstone.

I keep asking myself: Why is all this happening? What is it setting me up for?

One of my favorite songs says “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” I keep hoping that’s true. I keep thinking positively. It will all mean something, anything, eventually. But what matters right now, what I know matters, is that I am home, And safe. And my husband is taking care of me. And a friend who mattered came to see me. And my mom showed up without hesitation when she was called.

I know I’m loved, even if everything is falling apart all around me.

If I didn’t have bad luck …

I wouldn’t have any. Or so the saying goes.

The first hours of 2013 were great. No problems. I just hung out on my couch. I decided not to go for a run because my left IT band was still bothering me. My left big toenail (the one that is becoming increasingly black), also started hurting a little bit more.

Then, at about 4 p.m. my abdomen started hurting.

It wasn’t just as little pain, it was a horrible stabbing pain. I tried heat. I tried an ice pack. I took a bath. I took some pain relievers. I did everything. But 8 p.m. I was so sick and disoriented that I could barely stand up. Every time I moved it hurt.

I kept thinking it would get better. It didn’t.

Finally, fearing that my appendix was exploding or some other extreme malady was occurring, my husband high-tailed me to the hospital.

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I think the fact that I threw up, pretty significantly, in triage got me in quicker than I imagined I would. I was keeling over in pain. I could barely get into the hospital gown. But they loaded me up with Dilaudid, a pain reliever that’s not morphine (I’m allergic to morphine), and I suddenly felt so much better.

I had an x-ray done. They found nothing.

No explanation. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. It’s not that I wanted my appendix to be exploding. Not at all. That would have set my running back months (I had a surgery in July 2010 and couldn’t run for four weeks, longest four weeks of my life). But I wanted something to be happening so I could have a diagnosis and get work on making it better.

Instead, they told me to visit a gastrointestinal doctor.

Let’s me real: I’ve seen a lot of doctors lately. The thought of another one just bums me out.

So I started this year bummed out, doped up on pain relievers in an emergency room bed. After two months on leave, I didn’t have the heart to call in sick to work the next day. I was tired, and the pain still resonated, but I made it through.

On Thursday, I headed out to my car to go to work and noticed a strange scratch on the door.

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It didn’t look right. I opened the door and found something much, much worse inside.

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You’ve got to be kidding me?

No. Way.

Someone tried to break into my car. The only place I’d been? Work.

My car is in the garage when I’m at home. I sent my husband an email when I got to work.

“I think someone tried to break into the Jeep,” it said. He had me send photos. When he received them, he was livid.

I mentioned it to the security guard at work. He told me that someone else’s car was broken into earlier in the week, but no one was in the lot last night, etc.

My husband was firm: The only place it could have happened was in the lot at work.

The damage is fairly significant, especially on a new car.

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I filed a police report. We’re turning it into insurance. My typically mild-mannered husband was cursing and upset when I got home and showed him. I told him I impressed by the Jeep’s durability. The bad guys didn’t get in. Nothing was stolen. And it’s not like they can steal the car anyway, since a proximity chip is needed to start it.

Then on Friday, after all of this happens during the week, the cracks in the facade start to show a little in my anxiety. It turned into a bad day.

One bad day after another.

But … my IT band isn’t in as much pain as it was a couple days ago. I’ve been stretching it every night and rolling it out with my Grid roller. I’ve also been using my TriggerPoint ball to massage the ends of my IT band.

I ran six miles yesterday. I ran five miles today.

I’m hoping to run eight to 10 tomorrow morning.

The running is going well. I’m hopeful that I’ll be ready to tackle that trail 1oK on Jan. 26. (And start upping the ante for the half marathon in February.) So I guess there is good luck too in all this.

Since I keep having issues with that particular IT band, I’m considering investing in one of those physical therapy-style rubber straps to use to get some more mobility in that leg. I’m already rolling it out everyday. I’m stretching it out as much as possible. But the problem keeps coming back.

I suppose it’s better than having constant knee issues, but still. We’ll see if I can figure out a plan of attack on the IT band from hell.

A public service announcement on chafing

This is going to be a rather gross post. For that, I apologize in advance. But I think this sort of thing is important to address, especially with the number of winter races coming up.

This weekend, my mom and I ventured to Monterey for me to run the Big Sur Half Marathon on Monterey Bay. This was my second year doing so. And, for all my hiding in the portable toilet for 15 minutes and not being able to sleep too well the night before, I did really well. I knocked nine minutes off my time from last year, running a 2:28:27.

I also now know that, if I can pull myself together, I have a good chance of doing well at the California International Marathon in a couple weeks.

But that’s not what this post is about. I’ll get to weekend specifics and the race in the next couple days.

It’s about chafing.

Specifically, how bad it can get really quick.

Behold, the grossness of chafing.

That’s why I buried the lede here. It’s pretty gross. And this isn’t exactly the best photo. But you can see how badly torn up my fat little arms are. I’ve mentioned before that my upper arms don’t ever seem to lose weight. So my “fat little arms” are always rubbing.

I started the run with a long-sleeve shirt on. But by the time I hit the underground tunnel taking runners from downtown Monterey en route to Pacific Grove, I was taking it off and wrapping it around my waist.

That meant that my arms were exposed.

I usually wear Lululemon Run:Swifty shirts when I run. This time, I wore my Big Sur Half Marathon short-sleeve tech shirt under my long-sleeve layer.

I didn’t notice the chub rub at first. As we got to the turn around at Asilomar State Beach, I wasn’t feeling any pain. It was about the time I hit the mile ten marker that my arms started hurting. I looked down and realized my arms were chafing. Bad.

And it kept getting worse.

That was the point, too, where I hit two water stops without medical tents with Vasoline. Usually there’s someone waving a cardboard around with it. I couldn’t find anyone.

My fat little under arms were burning. I took my Lululemon long-sleeve from around my waist and stuck it under my arms. I was doing anything I could to keep the sweaty skin from rubbing anymore against my shirt’s sleeve. This is a shirt I’ve worn on runs before, but never sweating as much as I did for this run.

I held the long-sleeve between both my arms as tight as I could and just kept running. Finally, I saw a guy with a panel of Vasoline. I grabbed a huge lob and threw it, literally, under both arms. I was completely unapologetic about it. It was gross. It hurt. And I did it to myself.

And yet, it was still bad. These blurry photos are two days later. My arms are just now feeling as if I could maybe wear a running shirt again. And I’ve used lots of cream, specifically Aquaphor, to help the wounds heal. It hurt to even put a shirt on after the run.

By the way those lines are stretch marks. They’ve been there since I lost the 30-plus pounds when I started running.

Still, my fat little arms aren’t losing any weight.

So I figured I’d write a more lighthearted post from some of the more serious, personal ones I’ve done lately. This is a public service announcement on chafing.

Buy Glide. Or something similar. Even during the winter months, when it seems as if you won’t necessarily be sweating as much, it’s best to apply and reapply the glide. Just do it.

And also, stick to what you know for race clothes. I wear different shirts on my short runs than on my long runs. I should have known better. I should have stuck with my tank top instead. But it wasn’t “something new” on race day, so I figured I’d be okay.

Nope.

Wear Glide. Save your arms. Simple enough.

And that concludes my public service announcement.

Cheetahs in the dark and other night running perils

I make no apologies for running at night. It’s often the only time I can carve out a chunk of time to go on a run. It’s soothing in many ways, with the hum of wind coming over the Altamont hills near my home. It’s cooler than during the day.

But I’ll be the first to admit, it’s kind of scary.

Especially when you see a cheetah.

Well. Not really. That cheetah comes from Wikimedia Commons. Not Mountain House.

A couple months ago someone reported seeing a Mountain Lion where I run. Turned out to be a house cat. Yes, a house cat.

But the problem with running at night is that the mind can play tricks on your eyes. Even with a headlamp.

That happened to me and my running buddy Jennie recently. We’re already hyper focused on our surroundings. We literally turn around when we think we hear something behind us. We speed up in areas we’ve seen dogs jumping up to eye level at six-foot brick fences (seriously, a huge jumping dog).

We run through areas of darkness quickly, just to get to a brighter area.

And sometimes, we see things.

Once, on an early morning 20-mile run Jennie and I saw a fox. It was before there were houses in a specific area out in Mountain House. Instead, there were just frames. We hid, temporarily, in the world’s worst smelling portable toilets. That’s saying a lot about the smell too. I’ve experienced some pretty bad ones in my time as a runner.

The fox passed.

On the recent cheetah encounter run, we had joked about seeing wolves now that it’s darker when we run. On the backside of the community, there’s a farm where we often hear wildlife noises. So a wolf? Possible.

More possible? Seeing a feral cat.

So on that specific run, we were already psyching ourselves out a little when I turned a corner and saw bright eyes.

Crap.

What the hell is that?

Jennie, about 50-feet behind me, is coming closer.

“Cheetah!” I yell out, half kidding.

The look on her face was priceless. She was petrified.

She laughed it off after I told her it was just a cat. A cat that ran and hid behind a bush as soon as we came around a corner. (Don’t ask me why I didn’t try to save it. I have dogs. And ducks. I’m not a big fan of cats in general. I would completely ignore all cats if I could.)

A cat like the one above can turn into a monster on a night run. I’m not even kidding. That specific cat above belongs to my student Haley. Haley recently had her world turned upside down with more than her share of loses, including her faithful companion Peaches, a cat that was like a sister to her.

I’m glad Haley got a new cat today. I’m more glad that, I believe, she adopted a stray. She was really excited about it. And it made me realized I needed to write this blog post. (Rest in peace, Peaches.)

So a cat as innocent looking as Haley’s becomes a crazy beast ready to chase us. Except it isn’t.

Once you see something like that, you let your guard down a little bit. Whew. That passed. Right.

Jennie and I laughed it off and rounded a corner heading into our last mile. About 20-feet after the little store we sometimes stop at we again saw eyes. Bigger eyes. On a bigger animal.

And we freaked out. In an unexpected way.

Because it was dark.

Kind of like that.

Jennie and I did a quick back peddle and ran back toward the store. Jennie ran faster than I’d ever seen her run on any training run. We looked back when we got to a safe place, in front of the store, and realized the dog, large as it was, actually  was with a person. On a leash.

But for 10 seconds, that dog was scary to us. And neither or us saw the owner, even with two headlamps.

I know not to run from dogs. I have Chow Chows, often considered violent animals (I call my dog Cuddles sometimes even though his name is Beau, that should say something). I was raised around dogs.

That doesn’t make it any less scary when you see an animal, staring you down on a sidewalk in the dark. A dog can become a monster. And a cat that’s likely more afraid of you, becomes a cheetah.

Or maybe I’m the only one this happens to in the dark.

 

Cancellation of NYC Marathon brings mixed reactions

In case you’ve been under a rock over the past week, a lot has happened in New York City and along the East Coast. This not so little weather system called Hurricane Sandy (yes, my sarcasm is coming back, a little), hit the area and left widespread devastation.

Most of Lower Manhattan was flooded. Power was out everywhere. And the surrounding boroughs were just as bad. That was just that area too. In the running community the big news every early November is the New York City Marathon. It was scheduled to be run on Sunday, Nov. 4.

Today, it was canceled for 2012.

An official announcement was posted to the marathon’s Facebook page only a couple hours ago:

The City of New York and New York Road Runners announce that the 2012 ING NYC Marathon has been canceled. While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of disagreement and division. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event — even one as meaningful as this — to distract attention from all the critically important work that is being done to help New York City recover from the storm. New York Road Runners will have additional information in the days ahead and we thank you for your dedication to the spirit of this race. We encourage runners who have already arrived in New York City to help with volunteer relief efforts.

To say there are a lot of bummed runners would be an understatement. But there are also a lot of pissed off (for lack of a better term) people who thought the marathon should have been canceled days ago, when the storm first hit, when Manhattan was flooded, when Staten Island (where the race starts on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge) was asking, but not getting help and when people were still surveying the damage.

Let’s get this out of the way: I agree with the decision.

But, I also didn’t make the lottery this year. With what’s happened to me recently, I doubt I would have made the trek this week anyway. Still, as someone who has trained for a marathon and lined up knowing the nerves that come at the start, I can’t help but be a little disappointed for the runners who will not be making the 26.2-mile journey through the city’s five boroughs.

The reactions online, in countless articles and Facebook specifically, are very mixed.

Some are glad the run was cancelled.

Some are upset they won’t be running.

Others are urging people who are already in town to volunteer to help victims of Sandy.

In any case, people aren’t being quiet when it comes to how they feel.

The question is: How should people feel?

To train for something that long and not be able to run? To have spent a lot of money on a hotel room and flight and not be able to participate?

I’m tempted to say get over it.

But I also understand how sad it is to not be able to take on a goal.

I think, though, that race is about showcasing the beauty of New York City. In recent days, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and race officials said, instead, it would showcase New York’s resilience. I didn’t buy that.

And yesterday, when Katie at Runs for Cookies wrote about the cancellation of the Saturday 5K event. I figured the marathon would be next. I didn’t think it would take this long, though. I figured it would have been before people started getting into town.

How can you showcase the city when people are without power? Or water? How can you showcase a city when so many need help?

Yes, I’m glad the race was cancelled.

Not because I didn’t get in. But because I think the natural thing to do was cancel it. But for all those who were scheduled to run, letting go of that dream, I’m sure, isn’t easy.

I’ve DNSed several races, specifically when my body was too tired to do anything except sleep, but the races were small. I didn’t have a lot invested into them outside of fees (which for both was in the $40 range).

I feel for race organizers, who can’t please everyone with a decision like this. At the same time, I think the best thing for everyone would be to move on, find a new race if possible, and just be thankful. After all, some people on the East Coast no longer have anything.