It’s Been A Year

Hello and happy Friday. This short week has kind of thrown me for a loop but I feel like I’ve definitely crammed five days’ worth of activities into four. Though my week has been busy, busy I cannot complain because it’s been full of really good things…that I’m looking forward to sharing with you soon.

Brandon and I were talking about our dinner plans for the evening and discussing whether we wanted to go to the Greek Festival. I told him we should look at my recap post from last year to remind us how delicious all of the food is and that it’s worth dealing with the crowds. And while reading my old post did get me excited for a Greek feast, it also made me sad. The long run that I blogged about in that old post was the start of my hamstring injury that I’ve now been battling for a year. It’s been a year.

I know many of you are training for fall races (best racing season of the year!) and I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you of the importance of addressing injuries at the onset and not running through the pain. I know this is hard. It’s easy to let a training plan feel like the end all, be all but your health and longevity are much more important. When my hamstring was first injured last year, I was only six weeks out from the Marine Corps Marathon. I immediately stopped running for two weeks and aggressively treated it. Don’t get me wrong. It was not easy. I cried more tears than I care to admit during that time and wondered how I would possibly be able to run the marathon but the rest and treatment worked. I was able to finish my training and run Marine Corps 100% pain free. It was an amazing feeling.

Clearly, I am still dealing with this injury on and off as most of you have read over the past few months. I am currently running pain-free again and committed to getting to the bottom of this so I don’t have to say “It’s been two years” next September.  I really, really don’t want to say that.

I drug my sore body out of bed at 5:45 this morning for yoga. I’ve been trying to up my BodyPump weights lately and really feeling the effects the day after. Yoga helped, like it always does. Especially since I took lots of chest, shoulder and quad openers during the seated poses. People always ask, “Should I workout when I am sore?” and I always find that it makes me feel better. I think I will add an in-depth look at soreness to the queue of topics to cover on PBR.

Breakfast was plain Greek yogurt with granola (can’t get enough of this granola – my hand has been in the bag all week!), bananas, white chia seeds, peaches, figs and almond butter. I had an unpictured breakfast part two at work (we’ll call it a midmorning snack!) when I found a big tray of pastries from Panera in the kitchen. I had part of a cream cheese Danish…mmmm…

I was getting all the ingredients out for my normal veggie sandwich when Brandon mentioned that he was making an Italian sandwich. I traded the avocado and sprouts for Italian meats and fresh mozzarella and made a killer sandwich. Whole wheat with light mayo, a slice each of salami, capicola and soprasatta, basil, banana peppers, spinach, fresh mozzarella and Dijon mustard. So good.

So I guess we’re going to get our Greek on tonight and then I’m running a 5K and attending Salutation Nation on Saturday morning. Can you believe that this will be my first race since the Thunder Road Half Marathon. I actually haven’t run many 5Ks and I hope I can pace myself and not die!

Have a great weekend!

Anyone else racing or doing training runs this weekend?