What are you looking at?

Picture me holding up my fingers and whispering "Seven" just like Monica in that one Friends episode

Technically seven and a half, but the title was already clunky enough.

I ended up solving last week's problem of balancing a second short run with my first long run in a month by skipping the shorter one completely, allowing me to stay on track with Saturday's six-to-eight miler while also maintaining my delicate balance of training, work, and motherhood. The morning and early afternoon were pretty hectic--the fam and I did the one-mile family walk for the local Race for the Cure and then went on to spend a couple of hours at the zoo--so my legs were already aching as I changed into running clothes, taped my knees, and updated my iPod. But hey, you take the time when you have the time, and it was a beautiful day, and I was itching to see how much distance I could cover after being out of practice for so long.

That distance was seven and a half miles. But at this point you probably know that.

Anyway, it was a great run. Difficult sometimes, in that I experienced a few sharp pains on the outside of my right knee (the more troublesome of the two), but slowing from a jog to a walk gave me the relief I needed to push on. I took several walking breaks overall but still managed to finish in an hour and thirty-five minutes--an average pace of twelve and a half minutes per mile. Not record-breaking, by any means, but a respectable pace for a first-timer, according to my PT.

Speaking of physical therapy, yesterday was my last session. Keith (what, you aren't on a first-name basis with your PT?) had me run a mile on the treadmill to confirm my progress, and I finished in just under twelve minutes with a few short twinges in my knee and calves but no real pain. I should be fine for the Mini, he said, so long as I continue to listen to my body and walk/rest as needed. Katy and I are scheduled to attempt a ten-miler this Saturday, my first and only double-digit run before race day. Keith has instructed me to prepare for this long run the same way I would for the Mini, probably because when he asked me what I planned to eat before and during the race, I raised my eyebrows at him and tilted my head as if he had just spoken French. There's plenty of time to figure all that out! I said. We are weeks away!

That's when he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. Apparently, the time is now.

(I figured it wasn't worth mentioning that I don't have my race outfit yet. Didn't want to give the poor guy a heart attack.)

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It feels so good to finally be on track again, and except for the loss in mileage, the break doesn't seem to have done any major damage to my training. It feels so good, in fact, that last night I registered for the Rock 'n Roll Chicago Half Marathon taking place on August 1. I almost wet my pants a little bit when turning over my credit card information (races sure are expensive when they aren't comped by work!), but it seems like a logical next step for after the Mini. Having one half under my belt will allow me to prepare for Chicago with more concrete knowledge of what I am capable of, timing-wise, and maintain a more reasonable approach to training. Plus, that whole series looks like so much fun, and it's in my hometown, and the course runs along part of Lake Michigan. Why the hell not, right?

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Let's see, what else can I tell you? I'm feeling especially wordy today, as at the time of this writing my coworkers are off to lunch and I'm parked at my desk with a turkey sandwich and absolutely no motivation to eat it.

Those of you not reading this entry through a feed reader will notice I updated my blog banner. It only took two years? Aren't you proud of me? It's not the most eye-catching design in the world, and when I first published it, it took me two hours before I realized I had forgotten to include my blog name, but it features the people most important to me and a cool running quote from one of the most famous ultramarathoners in the world, and I cleaned up the awkard contractions in my title, and overall it just seems like a better representation of who I am right now. Luke has been charged with designing a banner that's a little more creative (see the fun-looking pirate ship featured on HIS blog? All Luke, baby), but he's had no time, and suddenly I just couldn't wait a second longer. You are welcome.

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Two days ago I did something insane and requested information from a nearby university about graduate school. School! Again! WTF? The whole rationale for getting my master's degree right out of college was so that I could focus on the demands of school without the distractions of a family. Now I have an M.A. from a reputable institution, along with a good job working for a great company in a fast-moving field. Mission accomplished, right? Plus there are two itty-bitty children who can't get enough of me as it is and a husband who has dreams and goals of his own he would like to pursue someday, thank you very much, and a running hobby that will have me going after my first marathon before I turn 35, a hobby with the potential to be just as time-consuming as school. Hell, with all the time I would spend researching and studying, I could be learning how to cook something for my family that doesn't involve bread or a microwave.

But...I don't know. For Christmas last year my brother's family gifted me a year-long subscription to Runner's World, and after my first issue I was already salivating at the mouth over the idea of writing for such a neat publication. Reading Kara Goucher's profile in the March issue only added fuel to the fire, so that by April I was asking myself some pretty serious career questions. If I really am going to be the primary breadwinner for my family, the last thing I want to model for my kids is that you can't find joy in your work. Not that I don't like what I do now. It's interesting, challenging, the company I work for couldn't be more family-friendly if they tried, and the people I work with are phenomenal. It's hard to imagine ever wanting to be in a different place. Then again, I'm only 30, and while my education and experience are pretty well matched with my current responsibilities, in order for me to advance to the next level professionally, I need more training. MBA, communications degree, accreditation in public relations, something a little more business-driven than what I took from my creative writing and grammar classes. Which would be fine, if any of those options appealed to me at all.

So, what do I want to do?

My dream job is writing beautiful stories about interesting people, trends, and events; stories that take months of research and investigative reporting and careful editing to convey something important about the human condition. The Kara Goucher profile is a good example of that. I believe I am certainly capable of that. But I haven't achieved it just yet.

Enter more school, in a program specifically grounded in the nitty-gritty aspects of journalistic, magazine-style writing. Like, say, an M.A. in journalism. And the best time to enroll would be when you work for an employer that would fit the majority of the bill.

Like, say, mine.

No decisions have been made yet; all I did was drop an e-mail to the graduate school office asking for information. But the wheels in my brain are definitely turning.

(Luke is thrilled, I'm sure.)

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I'm traveling to Long Beach, New York for a two-day sales meeting this week. My blog will turn six next week. My sister Ryan will be visiting from Germany in May, I've got two work trips in June, and Luke and I will see U2 in Chi-town in July. Samantha is having a baby, her second, in September, the same month I will walk down the aisle as a bridesmaid in my friend Gina's wedding and spend four days in Minneapolis for a conference. The kids are getting older and more easily transportable, as evidenced by our recent weekend activities and travel plans for summer--water parks, state parks, beaches, and museums. Our house is slowly starting to come together with a replaced kitchen faucet here, a dining room curtain rod there, and goals to repaint our kitchen. We're getting ready to celebrate four years of marriage in between potty-training Kara (half-heartedly) and weaning Nathan off his morning bottle, the last of the bottles to go. We are discussing family size and coming to an arrangement I think I can live with.

In other words, we are throwing ourselves into life. And it's pretty damn nice.

Screw perspective.

I want to run the Mini.

This revelation came to me last Wednesday during a ninety-minute consultation with a physical therapist, who diagnosed my knee problems as patellofemoral pain syndrome resulting from overtraining (too much speed, not enough rest) and switching into a shoe with too much pronation (mid-training, bad Frema!), which threw off my biomechanics and brought my kneecaps out of alignment. So, a little more complicated than just inflammation.

I went into my PT appointment with the same C'est la vie attitude I wrote about last time: There will be plenty more races in the future, missing this one won't be the end of the world, no use pushing myself to achieve a potentially unreachable goal. I was patting myself on the back for being so zen-like and reasonable and not assigning more value to the Mini than it actually deserved.

Then I learned that my physical therapist was a runner. And a parent. Who was also training for the Mini.

Being in front of somebody who knows where I'm coming from on a primal level made it almost therapeutic to talk about my struggles and challenges with training--balancing runs with work and home life, playing catch-up when building mileage defers to marketing deadlines and sick children--that it also reignited my passion. Somewhere between the flexibility tests, strengthening exercises, and random shop talk, I knew that I wanted to see this thing through. Of course I do. It's one of my biggest personal goals for 2010. I've worked so hard already, and in the hands of a healthcare professional more appropriately trained to help me with my problems, I could sense it was reachable. After all, the official goal has always been to simply complete the race. How I accomplish that (run-walk combo? baby-crawl to the finish line?) is up to hard work and fate.

Luckily, after a couple of visits and reviewing my progress, my PT agreed with me.

My first set of instructions were to tape both knees during the day to alleviate discomfort, do some exercises at home to build strength, and bike when possible until I could walk without pain (I think I did that once; cycling is boring at the gym). Once I could walk without pain, then it was time to run. SLOW running, he warned, since overexertion is one of the main reasons I got hurt in the first place, and short distances (no more than three miles), with plenty of walking breaks as necessary (another thing I was called to the carpet for--running through pain). I also have strict orders not to schedule my runs back-to-back; there has to be at least one rest day in between.

In the last week and a half I have been to three PT appointments and seen tremendous improvement. The gazillion exercises are annoying to keep track of, and I'm still not good at sticking to a running schedule, but pain is rare these days, with the primary sources being driving (bent knees in a fixed position) or standing in one place for long periods of time.

Because I've been feeling so much better, I broke the tape rule on Tuesday night when a hellish evening with the kids drove me out the front door the minute bedtime was done, because by then it was already dark and I didn't want to wait one second longer than necessary to hit the road, let alone the five to seven minutes it would have taken for me to properly apply the tape. The during part was okay--three miles, handful of walking breaks, 11.5-minute pace (if that, no Garmin to measure my stride)--but by the time I was sitting on my couch to catch the latest episode of LOST (fellow Losties: !), it felt like "shock waves" were running from my knees straight to my toes. I don't know how else to describe it except that it wasn't painful and 20 minutes of ice and elevation fixed the problem completely.

Needless to say I'll be wearing the tape for my next run.

That run should have happened last night, but even with this abbreviated schedule, training is getting tricky to coordinate. For example, on Monday Keith and I agreed that I would do short runs of three to four miles on Tuesday and Thursday and one long run of six to eight miles on Saturday. Reasonable mileage, adequate rest. Perfect, except on Thursday I came home late from work and Luke and the kids had been cooped up in the house all day and the weather was so gorgeous that we went for an after-dinner walk, which threw off bedtime by almost an hour, which threw off the rest of the night. Now I have to get my run in today and move my long run to Sunday, but that's going to throw off next week because I'm out two days for a sales meeting and there's a 5K walk we're doing for work and...

You see how I got into trouble, yes?

It would be so much easier if I didn't like running. It's time-consuming, unpredictable, hard. It pulls me away from my family, challenges my comfort zone (cross-training with free weights, hold me), and drives me to salivate over expensive gear. It seduces me into setting goals I might have no business contemplating--a marathon, maybe even an ultra-marathan, good Lord, am I crazy? I don't even know how many miles make up an ultra-marathon.

But for the peace of mind I experience while trotting along my trail, for the sense of accomplishment I feel when I hit my goal mileage, for the healthy example I'm setting for my children, is it ever worth it.

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Speaking of family, it's been a while since I posted any mugs of the Frema-Useless Clutter clan. Here we are, in the flesh.

My two favorite boys, with Nathan looking so very much like his daddy.

 

Kara enjoying tulips at the Indianapolis Gardens.

 

Nathan showing off his mad utensil skillz.

 

Are these kids shedding their baby skins or what? I swear they were babies, just yesterday. 

To Mini or Not to Mini?

That is the question, as it's been two weeks since my last run due to intermittent pain in my knees that will not go away, even with medication.

The problems started last month sometime after my weekend mileage went beyond the seven-mile mark. While soreness in my knees and ankles isn't uncommon for me after a long run, it usually resides after two or three days and I can continue with training as scheduled. But at one point it just...stopped going away. Not frequent enough or severe enough to interfere with my day to day, but even after a self-imposed running break, the occasional ibuprofen, and applying ice packs to both knees every night before bed for almost a week, the alternating feelings of pressure, tightness, and discomfort still persisted, so last Friday I finally caved and paid a visit to my primary care physician. She diagnosed the problem as fluid in my knees/inflammation due to overuse and recommended naproxen along with a continued break from running for seven to ten days to get me back on my feet. Well, it's been 17 days since my last run, and today is my tenth day on the naproxen, and nothing has improved; if anything, the pain is more noticeable than ever (though still not continuous). I've already scheduled a follow-up with my doctor to discuss next steps, which will most likely involve a referral to a physical therapist for a more thorough work-up.

All of this non-running just four weeks before the Mini Marathon begs the question: have I totally screwed my chances of participating in this race? Because even if I'm cleared to run in the next few days, I'm not sure that the training I do from here on out can make up for such a lengthy hiatus. Then again, maybe it's just a matter of readjusting my goals. As in, maybe running all thirteen miles is no longer realistic, but with frequent walking breaks, I could still complete the race without further injury.

Running this half-marathon has meant so much to me recently that I feel like I should be more disappointed about potentially missing it, but honestly, it's not the crushing blow I once imagined it to be. Competition or not, the time I spent training brought me back to my pre-pregnancy weight and provided a more structured approach to exercise and fitness. Plus, I want to be a runner for the long haul, not just for this race, and there are a bazillion other halfs I can do once my body is fully ready. No need to mope over this one.

In fact, in hindsight, I wonder if I had any business attempting this race at all, being such a new runner. Most of what I've read has suggested logging 20 to 25 miles a week before committing to such an ambitious undertaking as a half, and at the time I registered, I was barely in the double digits (if that). Not to mention that finding the time to train has been hard, really hard, which is partly the reason I got injured in the first place--constantly falling off-schedule, then scrambling to make up for it by sacrificing my rest days. Not the smartest way to cultivate a life-long habit or preserve any level of motivation.

So, I will see the doctor again, and I will follow her orders, and I will do what I can to get myself completely healed and back on track. But I will also gaze longingly at the runners I spot on the trail as the weather climbs into the seventies. This is my time. This is my sport. And I will get back to it.