It’s been a week full of crazy ups and downs so I thought I would just try to capture some of it in a blog post. The insanity started last Sunday evening. We had gone to West Hartford for dinner at a friend’s house, which was fantastic. But, the snow was coming down even on the way up there and the drive back was one of the most treacherous of my life! Route 9 had not been plowed and we had at least 4-5 inches on the ground. The windshield wipers froze up. I spent the whole drive crouched down peering through the one little strip of clear windshield available. Yikes. I would post a picture of the snow, but I’m sick of looking at it.
I suspect that hour (yes, drive took nearly an hour!) of tense crouching came back to haunt me the next morning when I hopped on the treadmill. I was hoping to run off some stress because Rose was scheduled for surgery on Monday. Just ear tubes in and adenoids out, but of course, any time your kid has surgery, it’s pretty worrisome. Instead of a glorious 20 minutes (I’m up to 20 minutes!!) of running, it was 20 minutes of terribleness. Pretty much the whole run was awful. I stopped at 10 minutes and gave myself a mental talking to, but it didn’t help. At about 18 minutes, I started to feel it in my butt, the injury flaring up. Damn!
Thank goodness her surgery went much better than my run. They are wonderful with kids at Children’s Medical in Hartford. She even got to drive a Barbie jeep on her way to the ER.
Still, surgery is surgery and she declared upon waking up “I never want to come back to this place ever!” Can’t say that I blame her and let’s hope her wish come true. Poor girl caught a cold that delayed her return to school, but otherwise, she’s doing great.
The bad run freaked me out a little, but it came with a huge dose of perspective as well. First, with surgery on the agenda for Monday, it was hard to get too worked up about running one way or another. I was so grateful everything went well, I really couldn’t find the energy to get too worked up about a bad run. Second, I think the bad run illustrates so clearly something I often forget. Stress is stress. The horrible drive plus the impending surgery was probably just enough to send me over the edge. Physically and mentally, I was done before I even started that run. Third, bad runs happen to everyone at any time. Just because I still sort of feel like an addict and every five minutes on the treadmill is like a little nugget of crack doesn’t mean it isn’t going to suck every now and then. Monday’s run sucked.
Wednesday I ran 10 minutes at physical therapy and everything was fine. Adding to the week’s weirdness, I went to Boston for a conference on Thursday. I was a little worried about the drive, which tends to irritate my butt, but no problems. My presentation at the conference went well – I occasionally talk about European politics, instead of running, just for a change of pace. They have even more snow in Boston than we do. I didn’t take any pictures of their snow either. I did run 20 minutes Thursday evening on the treadmill at home and it was fine.
In a week full of crazy, Friday night might have been the craziest. A couple of weeks ago, Snarky Girl sent me a strange text asking how I felt about trivia and roller derby. Teacher Runner got a similar text a few days later. Somehow we ended up part of a roller derby team for a trivia derby – GO Killer Bees! The Killer Bees did not turn out to be stars at answering trivia questions, but we won the award for most team spirit!!!
How could we go wrong with Loose Lips Lisa?
Jammin’ Jen and Loose Lips Lisa show the library who is boss!
I had to be Professor “Knock Down” for the night – Family Function!
The Killer Bees!
Finally, Saturday morning the Killer Bees put on our gym togs and hit the ‘mill. For 30 minutes. Including me! This is the longest I’ve run since declaring myself seriously injured on December 7th. I felt so completely fine. My butt felt fine. My back felt mine. My legs felt fine. Heart and head felt much, much better than fine. Not sure if it’s the fake tattoos, or the glitter, or all that physical therapy, but who cares – I’m starting to feel like this comeback is going to stick!
The Girls on the ‘Mills!
This includes warm up and cool down. Thirty consecutive minutes of running!
Of course, Sunday we were up to further hijinks, but that gets a separate post.