Happy Easter!

Today is my favorite holiday of the year. I love Easter and everything it represents. He is risen!!

I feel blessed that my dear husband, who works nights most of the time, was able to attend Easter service with the boys and me this morning. I’m not sure how awake he was for this picture, but at least he was there. 😉

I also would like to point out that I am wearing my first-ever sundress in that picture. 🙂

On the running front, I did attempt a run on Friday morning. I ran on the treadmill, since everything I’ve heard and read indicates that a treadmill, while not very exciting, is the best terrain for aching joints. I had high hopes of running two pain-free miles before I stopped and took another couple of days off, but alas, my knee was not of the same mind.

I couldn’t even make the two miles, unfortunately, and that was after stopping at a mile and a half to walk when my knee began to hurt. This really bummed me out. To make matters worse, I had a bit of a reality check regarding how soon my half-marathon is when I did my meal plan on Friday. I do them for two weeks at a time, using our family Google calendar as my guide to know when I need a quick meal, when something else is already planned, etc. This latest meal plan ended with these entries:

That’s right—carb loading the night before, and a celebratory meal out the night of the race. Because that’s how it should be! 😉

However, things changed a bit when I got an email from DS#1’s coach on Friday night. Turns out his team is now officially entered into a local hockey tournament the weekend of April 12-14^th.

Awesome.

I had already sent an email to both boys’ coaches letting them know my sons would not be available for any games the morning of the 13^th because I need them with me to cheer me on. But a tournament is a whole ’nother animal. The most likely scenario is a game Friday night, a game Saturday morning, and another one Saturday afternoon or evening, then possibly another one Sunday morning. While skipping one game is not the end of the world, I can’t in good conscience have him skip three games. Since my husband will be working that weekend, that means that instead of a relaxing spaghetti dinner the night before my race, I’ll be driving about 120 miles round trip to a hockey game. And then Saturday afternoon, instead of sleeping the sleep of the gods after running 13.1 miles, I will be doing another 120-mile trip for hockey.

Sigh. Once I saw this, I really began to doubt the wisdom of this whole half-marathon thing. So much so, in fact, that I actually woke up Friday night at 3:30am and just tossed and turned for an hour, stressing about it. It was at that point, while lying there, unable to sleep, that I came to the startling (to me) realization that I might not be able to do this race. 🙁 Up until Friday, when I was fully resting, I never really gave credence to the idea of not running the half. But when I was unable to complete even two miles without pain, after five days of rest, I realized that my problems might be bigger than I realized. Add the new logistical issues of a hockey tournament to the mix and you can see where panic might set in.

I’ve gone back and forth about it in the last two days. I’ve mentioned to a couple of people that I’m beginning to doubt my ability to do the half on the 13^th, with varying responses. Most have been in agreement that I shouldn’t do it. Some (usually the runners) are supportive without giving a definitive opinion for or against.

Last night, I finally told my husband that I was thinking about not doing it. When he asked why, I replied that besides the knee pain, besides the logistical nightmare of hockey and a half-marathon, the truth of the matter was that I didn’t see where I could possibly be ready. With this knee injury, my training program is shot. There is no way I will be able to do any more long runs before April 13^th. If my knee does improve, it would be foolish of me to run more than a short-mile run between now and the half-marathon. Since I skipped my 8-miler, then was unable to complete my 9-miler, this means that my longest run pre-race will have been seven miles. To go from seven to thirteen just seems unlikely. And foolhardy!

To my surprise, my husband was not so convinced. He reminded me of a conversation I had had with my friend Dave after church the morning after my injury. Dave is an experienced runner as well as a great guy. He’s very funny but also very matter-of-fact. When I told him of my troubles, he was very sympathetic but at the same time, he was not willing to “coddle” me and my poor knee. He told me that all runners go through this, and he reminded me that I had been training for 9 weeks up to the point at which I was injured. He assured me that, if I didn’t run again between that day and the race (three weeks total), my body was still well-trained. Would I run it at my best pace? Of course not. Might I have to walk part of it? Probably. But that isn’t a reason to back out of the race. It’s just a reason to rest and take it easy on myself, which is really what my body is trying to tell me to do anyway.

After he reminded me of that conversation, my husband finished with this: “Just keep resting it. Don’t stress about not being able to finish your training. Because the truth is, if your knee is healthy by race day, you’ll finish it. You have two more weeks to get healthy, so just focus on that.”

I was surprised, because my husband doesn’t talk to me much about my running (did I mention he hates running? 😉 ). He’s always supportive of me, but this is the first time he has been supportive of the whole “running process,” if that makes sense. To hear those words from him made me feel better. I’m still nervous, but now I’m doing something other than sitting on my butt eating chocolate and feeling sorry for myself. I did some weight training yesterday, and I went for a bike ride both yesterday and today.

I’ve even been doing some stretches that I read about online to strengthen the muscles around my knee. It feels good to be exercising again, if not running, and I’m hopeful that each day will be better.

I was supposed to run 10 miles yesterday. It was hard to not be depressed about skipping it, but I know there will be a day in the future when I will run 10 miles, not for a race, but just because I want to run ten miles. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ll run ten miles on the day before Easter in 2014. I had to skip my annual tradition of Easter brunch this year due to my husband’s schedule, and I’ve been really lamenting it today, because I love brunch. (It’s breakfast, it’s lunch, it’s dinner, it’s dessert—what’s not to love?!) I’ve decided that next year I will make sure we do brunch, but of course, to really enjoy it, I’ll need to run ten miles the day before. 😉

Thank you for reading, and again—happy Easter!