Nice!

If you don't live on the east coast and cant enjoy this weather lately....I'm sorry.  It's been incredible the past few days, between 50-70 for the past 4 days or so. SCORE!

So, DUH, I spent as much time as possible outside during that time.  I spent a couple hours each day of the weekend at the farm working with Indy- lunging him, and walking him around the field with my mom.  It was good bonding time for me and Indy and good to spend some quality time with my mom, as always.

Saturday night we went to a great cocktail holiday party at Janelle's house (a work friend of Adrian's).  It was surprisingly a blast.  There was a great mix of people there and we were always in conversation with somebody interesting and nice.  And getting dressed up is always fun, especially when it's so rare.  I will say one thing that was bad, though- I ate more food than I planned because there was really nothing healthy there except for the veggie platter I brought.  I am really not exaggerating, unfortunately.  They even had peanut butter drop cookies.  YUM!

Holy delicious!

And there was stuffing....yeah, enough said.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention something that has been helping me keep more active lately- Weight Watchers launched a new product called "Activity Link."  It's sorta like a fitbit in that it tracks your movement forward, backward, side to side, etc and the acceleration.  During your first week you establish your base line- then you have a challenge every week to increase your activity.  The data is really awesome because you see exactly when you were active and how active you were.  It has really opened my eyes to how sedentary I am when I am not actively working out.

So, I've been doing as much little things as I can to get my activity up.  Like parking as far away as possible at every store or place I go to, walking the long way to get somewhere, and when I am on the phone I walk around Petsmart if I'm at a location or outside if I'm home.  It's been really helping and I love seeing my numbers go up! I am definitely a data person, so I really appreciate seeing my progress in a visual way.

One of those things I've been doing is walking to the grocery store instead of driving when I just need something quick.  I did this Monday and again today after work.  It is about 3.5 miles round trip, so it's a good walk and has multiple hills.  And perhaps some shady people.....

But today, one of those shady people made me feel amazing about myself!  I was running (I was really full out running when I went past him) in intervals in my barefoot shoes.  I didn't want to overdo it, especially after an exhausting physical therapy yesterday, but I also wanted to mix it up and get a little extra cardio in.  So, I ran past several people during my trip to the grocery store and one looked me straight in the eye and said "Damn, babe. Looking fine!"  And he was actually a pretty good looking, tall, dark and handsome glass of chocolate milk.

How I felt

I gotta say, this pretty much made the rest of my trip amazing.  It was such a huge ego lift and made me feel pretty incredible.  Although compliments often make me feel quite uncomfortable, sometimes they are exactly what you need to make your day!


What's the best compliment you've received lately?

Wowsers

So I drove 200 miles today....



Yeah it kinda felt like I was on the road the whole day, endless.  I drove all over the place, and managed to take a wrong turn....in the way of at least 15 miles out of my way before realizing it.  MAJOR face palm.   Guess why I messed up?  I was on the phone with my mom talking about Indy.  Silly Colleen, driving distracted. BAD.


On another note- I feel like I'm continuing to make progress with my leg (and back!) pain!  After all the driving today I was feeling MEGA stiff and achy, which was totally understandable.  So instead of throwing in the towel and heading home, I ran some errands including grocery shopping.  By the time I was done all the walking around my legs were feeling good.  YES!  So I figured my groceries could keep an hour in the cold- because I didn't want to go home and take the risk of not leaving again.

I did a nice warm up walk around the indoor track for 10 minutes then did my lower body strength training exercises from physical therapy- aka some reverse lunges, squats, reactive hip flexors, etc.  I received some funny looks during my hip flexors exercise- they can hate all they want but it helps my hip mobility.  Then I did my current "allowed" running stint on the treadmill:  a few minutes walking, then 10 minutes running at a comfortable but not easy pace at 1.0% incline, then a few minutes cool down.  My pace was about 5.5 mph and I ran with the metronome going steady at 175 bpm.  And I kept checking my forward lean in the mirror.

See I can be a good physical therapy patient!  I must admit though- I didn't enjoy this run.  I was so focused on my form and my cadence and remembering everything I've learned, that it was hard to enjoy the run itself.  I found myself checking my time a lot and unlike most of my other little runs lately, I was glad to be done after 10 minutes.  O well, not every run can be great, let's face it.


When you are feeling blah and not wanting to work out, what do you do to overcome it and get your butt in gear?

Helloooo

Wow....I've missed writing lately, and I've made every excuse in the book as to why I didn't want to, couldn't, shouldn't, etc.  nnn

So....the shouldn't part I will explain as best I can because I feel that is a legitimate reason why I havne't posted.  Work has been very....stressful to say the least the past 3 weeks, especially the past 2 weeks or so.  Heck lets be honest- work has been stressful this entire year.  The stress has varied from normal work stress to extreme levels and back down again.   I don't feel comfortable talking about it due to the public nature of this blog but needless to say- I needed to stay away from my blog for a while when I was in the RAAARRR I want to scream stage of my stress so I didn't post something I would regret.



Angry kitty!

Yeah, I didn't want to turn into that monstrosity, sorry. So I was smart and just kept reading all my favorite blogs but dind't post in fear of writing something I would regret or starting a binging spiral.   It's odd how the majority of the time writing is very therapeutic, but sometimes you don't want to get the words out there because they make you face reality.

Well, one reality I have been facing lately is not being able to run.  It's sucked, but my body must have really needed it because it's responding well to the physical therapy.  My physical therapists have me doing a lot of stretches, long held yoga poses, and some strengthening work involving my legs and especially my core.  It's very humbling to find out you are basically a weakling and have crappy core strength even given all the work I have put in to both areas.  Humbling and frustrating.

The PTs have been giving me some running time at the end of my physical therapy sessions and it's not surprising how unsettling it is to run under scrutiny.  Although, having said that- it has been helping .  On Friday Mark had me running on the treadmill for an entire 10 minutes.  Yeah...very short time but that was a build up from my first run with them at 3 minutes.  The run on Friday felt good, like really darn good.  I'm working on so many things associated with my form sometimes it's really hard to keep it all in mind when I'm running.  But, if I just focus on my forward lean and cadence the rest seems to kind of fall into place.

So...that's all for now.  I'm sorry for my crappy posting lately- Hopefully I can find the motivation soon.

Bad running form= pain

Ugggh.  Today has been both good and bad.  Mainly good with a bad end.

I'll start with the bad first because that's how I'm feeling after another night of needless eating.  Not the same as last night- mainly my choices were good and they were because I was actually hungry.  Then I wasted 10 points on 3 little desserts. STUPID! But....delicious.  So as Joan suggested to me earlier (thanks Joan) you need to forgive yourself.  It happened, now I need to move on.  And not do it again tomorrow!!

The big deal that happened today was I had another physical therapy appointment.  On Monday I met with Mark and had my initial evaluation.  He was nice and gave me lots of hip rotator stretches, hamstring, and even some lower leg stretches.  He suggested trying some more elliptical to gauge how I felt and asked me to bring in my running shoes to my next appointment.  Mark's a triathlete (cool!) and was excited about all the activities I was doing and that I was a swimmer- which he said is the best workout I can get right now.  Given my goal of being able to run with no pain- he suggested I spend some time with Barb as well, who is a long distance runner and works a lot with runners and improving form.

Which was today, with Barb.  She was AWESOME.  Plain and simple, she was simply fantastic.  After a quick review with me and my chart- she immediately wanted to see my running shoes and already was telling me what my form was like and how my food landed before she even saw me stand.  She eventually had me run on the treadmill since I was having no pain.  She recorded me from behind and from the side on her iPad while I ran (slowly) on the treadmill.  Initially running wasn't painful but it quickly became more and more uncomfortable so I was glad when she asked me to stop after only a couple minutes.  Then we sat down and she explained what she saw.


Bad heel striker!

 All in all....I am a complete running disaster.  I do pretty much everything wrong.  I heel strike, I have very hard and loud foot falls, slow cadence, I don't pick up my feet enough....and that's the initial impression.  My posture is too rigid and I have such side dominance that I turn my torso more on one side than the other. My right shoulder rotates more than my left- looking like I'm trying to pull my left side along behind me.  And my left hip is too tight which isn't allowing me to get a fast enough turnover on that side, making my right side work twice as hard.  In fact, my whole left side of my body is just plain stiff and not as flexible as my right.  Also I overpronate- which looks even worse in slow motion.  Heck, I overpronate when I walk so this is nothing new.  O yeah, and I have zero forward lean.

As I sat next to her listening to her massacre my form (in a nice way, explaining along the way what it should look and feel like) I felt this odd combination of relief and embarrassment.  Relief because this is something concrete we could work on.  Embarrassment because here I thought my form was good- or so I've been told by others (until Rick Meyers' clinic that is.  Apparently he knows what he's talking about lol) and apparently this whole time I've been a complete running disaster.

She said we have two paths we could go down:
1. Work towards a goal race and get me pain free- basically fix the immediate problem and send me on my way.  She said if we do this it is very likely the problem will reoccur if I continue to run long distances- but I could keep at running less that 6 miles or so with this form long term with minimal repeats of the same type of injury.  But add in building up to half and full marathons and the injury WILL return.
2.  Take significantly more time NOW to rewire my entire running form from top to bottom.  It will take longer, but once my form is good, I shouldn't have issues running much longer distances giving my overall fitness level if I train properly.

DUH, option 2!!  There really is no option 1 is what I told her.  She replied with a "that's exactly what I was hoping to hear."

So, I have a very long and tedious road ahead of me that she said will be very challenging and frustrating, but Mark and her will be there every uncomfortable step along the way.  It WILL be worth it, for sure!  The immediate plan is lots of stretching and strengthening of my hips- especially my left hip.  After much manipulating and prodding of my hamstrings, glutes, and hips- the left hip really leaped out as the main problem.  Interesting how these things happen!  She seems concerned about possible bursitis- so she is confirming with my doctor that the hip x-rays showed the left hip clearly enough to rule it out in my left hip.  My doctor was initially focusing on the right hip, so I'm really not sure...

We will see.....but I feel more optimistic