Dear Karma.....

It's time to pay up

As some of you might know, I injured my right calf somehow last Monday and have been in a lot of pain since then. I haven't run now in 10 days and yes, have been panicked the whole time. It happened during speedwork, I didn't trip, fall, or roll anything, something just got tight and painful. I've been walking without a limp now for 4 days, and that's a big achievement. I've been visiting a sports medicine place to try to work on it, and it's the craziest most painful massage ever. My diagnosis is still kind of a mystery, tight peronials, peronial nerve irritation, micro tears, I don't know, all I know is I can't run.

Like I mentioned earlier, I've been freaking out. Everyone says how there's so much time left, but ya know what? When I can't run 10 seconds without a huge limp and a TON of pain, and have a marathon to run AFTER 112 miles on the bike and 2.4 in the water - 2-3 weeks does not sound like a long time. Sure this could have happened in the middle of training and wrecked it. Yes I'm grateful I got all the long hard stuff done first, but uh, I didn't do all that long hard stuff to walk limping through a 6 hour marathon. Nope, sure didn't.

I've been spending a lot of time on the bike which is good for me. I'm happy there. My swim training has suffered some the last couple weeks as flip turns with one leg are annoying. I was pleased to see some good endurance at my swim on Friday though. I've even done some aqua jogging (Thanks Cindi for reminding me to do what I can, and not worry about what I can't).

There has been some progress made with the leg, but not enough yet. Not enough to run the marathon that I trained for. This next week will be the tell-tell week. If things aren't noticably better by the end of it, drastic measures will be taken - sounds serious huh? :)

I've been a big whiny butt for a while now dealing with this. I'm still pretty pissed, but that's not going to help. The last couple weeks I would keep hoping I'd wake up and have everyone tell me "I told you so" because my leg was all better and I was just paranoid. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and I don't plan on being magically better tomorrow anymore. I try to keep my mind off of everything and just do what I can. Today was a great day for that.

I spent the morning out on my bike. 75 miles with a smile on my face. I cheered for so many friends I know - Jonathan, Stacey, Dan, Sarah, Chuck, Steve, April - and so many others I didn't know. Seriously, I think I passed everyone in both the half and full marathon at least once, except the top 5 men and women whom I somehow missed. It was great. The sun was out, I was warm, no stress, roads were closed to traffic, just a great time cheering on all my great friends whom all had great races!
After that I rode up to Davis County to see the ending of the Legacy Duathlon, so fun to see so many people being active. Then I enjoyed the last 25 miles, just by myself, enjoying the legs that I have built, the warm sunshiny world around me that God built, and the lovely green bike that Quintana Roo built :)

While I'm not really superstitous like this, I'll take what I can get right now.

Dear Karma,

I spent the day cheering for all my friends with no ill intentions. No intentions to be out there racing myself, no waa's because I couldn't run, no "I could beat her/him", just some honest support for my friends. I rode around that course for 30 miles with a cowbell in hand cheering for everyone I saw. I went out nice and early as to be home for my family later on, and speaking of family, I even stopped by a lemonade stand and bought a cup from 2 little girls. So if you can find it in you, I could really use some payback now in the form of a healthy leg. Thank you!

~Leslie