Down but not out...

I need a moment of mushy love for my friends! You guys totally rock. Thank you so much for the support, advice and helping me deal with this shit-fest of crappy luck.

I took 4 full days off from running because of my possible stress fracture in my right tibia. I tried to get some cardio in so I went to the pool everyday for 1.7 to 2 miles of freestyle swimming. It takes forever and is no where near what I need to feel like I had a workout. Just boring as hell. But it's a great arm workout!

Welcome to my gun show. haa..that looks so wimpy!

I tried to make it hard. I never stopped until the workout was over. I doubled my average workout length. I chased people in neighboring lanes. It's not easy but I would say 80 minutes in the pool felt like a 7 miler on the road, cardio wise.

After an hour of swimming I started to get loopy. My flips would be a little too close to the wall. One time I swam right into the wall. Not hard but enough to feel like a dork and scratch my cap. I busted out laughing so I had to back stroke to get the giggles out for a few seconds. At that point I was the only one in the pool and in the lane by the life guard. I call it the Laura Show. ha.

So, by Saturday I felt like I should try running Sunday morning. I had zero pain except in the areas where I had electrical stim, Graston Technique and Ultrasound. So I tried to mentally weed out the deep bruise pain and just run. These are the tools used to more/less break up scar tissue against my bone with Graston. Scrape, scrape...Ouch.

Easier said than done. The first few minutes I was stoked. I actually yelled expletives and raised my arms  like Rocky at 6:30am at Shelly Lake. Finally! But then I tensed up. I was afraid the pain would return.  I noticed I was not relaxed at all. I was analysing every step. Not fun. I kept telling myself:

*put your foot down.
*use your calves
*lean forward
*Toe, LaBella, toe, use it..

It took me 8 miles of nit picking to finally forget about it and just do an easy run. I did 10 miles total at 8:39 pace. It never really felt easy because I don't run that pace but I knew that was best for me right now. Somewhere around mile 7 someone on a bike went by me and yelled, "Hey Honey Badger!" I later learned it was Ben (thanks ; ) but I thought, ya know what I need to stop staring at my legs and just go. So I did.

One thing I think jacked me up physically was the obsessive swimming. Switching over to running uses totally different muscles. I went from not bending my legs at all to the complete opposite. But I kept my sanity and got some good workouts.

My marathon is in 3 weeks. I'm not calling it off yet. I don't think I lost all of my fitness in 4 days. I will do a few more slow runs and see how I feel. I hope it happens. But if I don't feel 100% I will choose a back up. I'm just going to chill an see what happens. I'm not out yet!

Thanks again!!
XOXO
Laura