Lessons Learned

Well, it has been 1,247 days since I last ran. Yeah, okay, a slight exaggeration. 😉

Actually, it has been 8 days since I last ran, but it sure feels like an eternity. On top of that, it has been a very stressful week at my job, and I couldn’t even relieve the stress by running! 🙁 I never would have thought that I’d use running as stress-relief!

I went to my physical therapy appointment bright and early Monday morning, and I must admit, it wasn’t quite what I expected. It turns out that PT is a lot of stretching and…well, stretching. The physical therapist had me do a bunch of little exercises to diagnose me (my favorite was the one where I had to balance on one foot—I can’t even do that when I have two pain-free knees!). Once we were done, he told me that my calves are actually stiffer than my IT band! That surprised me. He then had me do a bunch of stretches of both my calves and quads, as well as my IT band, but not as many of those last ones as I expected. It took about an hour, and I did feel like the stretching helped, but, honestly, not enough to continue paying for the therapy (it was subject to my insurance deductible, which is pretty high).

But, I was given a sheet of stretches I could do at home, in addition to the stretches I was given at my original doctor appointment, and I’ve been doing those pretty faithfully. I’ve also been doing strength training. See?

I’m not sure why I’m smiling…I really don’t like strength training. 😛 But at least it’s exercise. And it’s amazing how much I MISS exercising now that I do it on a regular basis. I also rode my bike for four days in a row, but then I decided that it was time to truly rest my knee, so Wednesday and Friday were truly rest days, while Thursday was another strength training day. Good thing I planned it that way…our spring weather turned really cold and wet on Wednesday and has continued for the last three days.

In fact, that brings me to the topic of my “almost” half-marathon, the one I was supposed to do tomorrow, for which I completed trained 10 weeks of training before my knee injury. The weather isn’t looking ideal for the race, unfortunately. We had a great deal of rain these last few days, and according to my weather source (yes, it’s everyone’s weather source, The Weather Channel), it’s supposed to be about 39 degrees and possibly snowing for race time…WTH?! That’s not fair at all! I suppose I should be happy that I won’t be running tomorrow, but I do have a lot of friends who are running it, and I feel really bad for them. On the other hand, one thing I’ve learned about runners is they are a hardy lot, and they don’t let any kind of inclement weather stand in their way. (Hey, I think I can even count myself in that group!)

Honestly, I still wish I was getting up to run tomorrow. As I mentioned in a previous post, tonight was supposed to be my “carb night” before the big race, and although we did still have spaghetti (with my homemade sauce which I must say is quite awesome), I was a bit sad to not have a real “reason” to eat carbs. However, I decided a couple of days ago that while I will not be running a race tomorrow, I will be running…or at least, I’m damn well going to try! I know I was told to take two weeks off running, but I think that three weeks with only three very short runs is close enough. It’ll be nine full days off of running entirely tomorrow, and I think I’m ready to give it a real try again. My last run wasn’t as bad as the first two post-injury, so I feel like I can do this.

Honestly, the truth is, I need to run, for my sanity and emotional well-being. I’ve really learned a lot about myself these last three weeks, or rather, I’ve learned a lot about the new me. I’ve learned that exercise and especially running has become an integral part of my life, and I am happiest when I am able to do it on a regular basis. When I’m not running, my whole attitude changes, and I get depressed. And when I get depressed, it’s hard to maintain my healthy eating habits. And that is a bad, bad thing!

In the 18 months since I got serious about Weight Watchers, this is the first thing that has really proven to be a test of my ability to stay on track. I had a lot of other things that could have caused me to falter—the death of my husband’s grandfather, the dissolution of my son’s hockey team, a trip to Disneyworld, for crying out loud!—but I never felt any real temptation to stray during any of those times. These last three weeks, however, have been much harder…I feel like I’ve really tested my ability to do this “healthy lifestyle” thing for the rest of my life. I had a rough go the first week, but I did get better. Still, I gained 3 ½ pounds, which probably doesn’t sound like a lot to anyone but me, but considering I’ve only had maybe half a dozen “gains” in an 18-month time period, and they all came off the next week, it feels like a lot to me!

So, the lesson I’ve learned is that not only is exercise is critical to my health—mental and physical—but I need to come up with a contingency plan should this ever happen again. Chances are good that it will happen again, and if it does, I definitely need a better “Plan B” than the one that had me eating cake, ice cream and brownies as “exercise.” I don’t have that Plan B yet, but I’m going to work on it!

Meanwhile, it’s time for me to get to bed. I’m actually excited to get up tomorrow morning and run—it’s been way too long!! I have to do it early, since my son has a tournament hockey game an hour away from our house and we need to be there by 9:30am. But I’m really looking forward to finally (hopefully) getting back into an exercise routine. My hope is that I’ll be able to run three miles tomorrow…wish me luck!

I will leave you with a picture, since I usually like to have photos and I only had one to use for this post. My friend Katie has been posting a lot about her cats in conjunction with a trip she took to the Purina headquarters, and I’ve really enjoyed learning more about cats and their behavior through her posts. My cats are funny, like most cats, and only seem to want to be affectionate on their “own” time. So I found it surprising when I was doing my stretches earlier this week that my cat, Spike, came by to “help” me. In this shot, he’s starting to walk away (he’s camera shy, ha ha!), but before this, he came right up to my face and wanted to “love” on me while I did my stretches. I guess he thought that if I was on the floor, I was fair game for offering him attention. 😉

I will let you all know how my run goes later this weekend. Thank you to everyone so much for the support!!