Guess who’s back, back again…

Well. It’s been a while, huh?

I don’t really have any great excuse for my disappearing act. I just wasn’t really feeling inspired. The winter took a toll on my fitness, and it felt insincere to blog about health and wellness when I wasn’t putting in my best effort on my own end. However, I’m really making a push these days to get back to where I was this time last year, and it seemed like the right time to get back to posting. So… hi! Here I am, and here’s what’s been happening since I went silent back in February.

You may remember that I signed up for the Boston Athletic Association medley, committing to run a 5K, 10K, and half marathon between April and October. Well, apparently that wasn’t quite enough for me, because I also registered for the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon in November. I’m running that with some awesome friends from college and I’m really excited for the mini-vacation and the chance to share this activity with some of the people who mean the most to me.

After completing the BAA 5K, 4/18/15

Since I’m not really great at sticking to training schedules on my own, I signed up with BostonFIT to help with training and accountability. This is a great group for beginners like me; the half marathon training team has people from all experience levels and I wasn’t at all intimidated heading into our first meetings. I loved that the weekly runs got me out of my normal routine and that the group helped to keep me on track with my training.

The 5K, the first race in the medley, was held April 18 in Boston and was a blast. This is hands-down my favorite race every year. It’s held during Marathon Weekend in my hometown, and it’s hard to describe the energy in the air – if you haven’t experienced it, you can’t possibly imagine how vibrant the city becomes. Tens of thousands of runners and their families stream into Boston for the race, and the city comes alive. We had amazing weather – perfect clear blue skies and a slight chill in the air at the start. I definitely should have ditched the long sleeved layer before beginning the race – I was super sweaty at the end. I unfortunately didn’t PR like I had hoped to, but I figured that would improve with training.

Trying really hard to grin and bear it through terrible conditions and killer hip pain during the BAA 10K

The 10K was two months later, held on 6/21/15. I thought I would be fine in this race. Training was going well, and I was building up my mileage. On my training run the week before the race, I noticed that my right hip was feeling pretty sore after about 5 miles, but I figured I would just foam roll it out and it would be fine. The ache went away after some rolling and ibuprofin, so I shrugged it off and geared up for the 10K. Unfortunately, race morning brought with it torrential downpours. As a newbie runner, I still haven’t quite acclimated to the “run in any conditions” thing. But I had committed to the medley and I knew I would be super disappointed in myself if I gave up at this point, so I stuck a hat on and hoped for the best. According to the race results, just under 6000 people finished — and there were over 8,000 people registered, so the weather definitely scared a lot of people away!

Things were going fine until the turnaround. I don’t know what happened, but at that point my right hip just decided it did not want to run anymore. I tried switching to run/walk techniques, and ultimately had to walk for the fourth and fifth miles. My mom was waiting at the end of Comm Ave, right at the turn onto Arlington – the last stretch of the race – and hearing her cheers gave me the boost I needed to finish strong, but I paid for it in the form of a seriously pissed off hip joint.

Following the race, I tried ice baths and foam rolling, but the hip pain was not going away. I paid a visit to the doctor, who diagnosed bursitis, along with the completely unhelpful suggestion, “Maybe you just aren’t a runner.” Thanks, pal. Under his orders, I took 6 weeks off from running. After about a week of ice and anti-inflammatories, I did head back to my yoga and pilates classes, modifying the leg activities to nurse my still-angry hip joint.

This week marks my first week back in my running shoes, and it’s slow going. I’ve got 4 miles scheduled for Saturday and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous, but I’m still determined to finish the two half marathons on the book for this fall.

So that’s why I’m back here… I need to keep myself accountable. This blog has been reborn as my race training diary. I’ve got 9 weeks until the BAA half, and 14 weeks before the Vegas half. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that I’ll be setting any race records come October in Boston, but I’m hoping to use that course as a way of testing the waters and seeing what areas of training I need to focus on during the 5 weeks between Boston and Vegas. I’ll be more intentional about my strength training and cross-training, and I’ll also be more focused on keeping my nutrition on point — and I’ll document all of it here.

For those of you who are still sticking around, thanks for the support. I hope you’ll join me on this next adventure!