a bit before 9am

Saturday morning I woke up at 4:45am.  Who wakes up at 4:45am? crazy people.  I was supposed to leave my house by 5:45am, and I needed to give myself time to be more awake than sleepy when I actually left.  It was our benchmark run, and I was anything but ready.  I'd been hydrating all week, and my month long sobriety has certainly been helping.  My feet, on the other hand, are a mess.  Friday night I went to bed early, and just like last week, I woke up petrified.  I mean, seriously, if I couldn't make it - how the hell do I get back?  Once you leave, once you commit to a certain direction, don't you HAVE to finish?  I mean, you'd have to at least WALK back right.  Or curl up on the sidewalk for a bit.  I admit to having visions of me needing to do the latter.  But I got up, ate a banana and some toast, and got my gear on. I met up with my running group at 6:00, and we did some stretches, went over our route and we were off by 6:15am.

When we started it was pitch-dark, and as we hit the woods in the trail around Town Lake I couldn't see shit. There are many twists, turns, embankments and bridges along the trail, and several times I nearly wiped out. We must have spent the first 3 miles in this heavily wooded area and, in support of my general life philosophy, things just don't seem to count in the dark because I barely felt a thing. It was pretty cold, I was running in a long sleeved shirt for the first time ever, and my legs were freezing. Nothing like the 95+ temps I had learned to tolerate during my early morning runs this summer.

Our route took us all over the city, and up and down and up and down many torturous hills. At about Enfield crossing Mopac someone stopped to wonder how far we'd gone. My own guesstimation was about 5 miles at that point. The actual answer, a little over 7. Sweet baby Jesus, I love it when we're actually ahead of how I feel. This was going alright. Mile 9 was our second water stop, and perhaps we were stopped for too long, I had trouble getting going again. Around mile 10 I realized I was suffering from the same toe ailment I contracted last week, only this time in the homologous toe. And I won't lie, it hurt. Like hell.

As we ran down Congress, the LiveStrong 5k was just finishing up. As I was considering what would happen if I removed my toes right then and there, the last walkers of the 5K entered the finish area. One of them was a small boy, maybe 11 years old, using a walker, and obviously suffering from some profound physical disabilities. It was just the kick in the pants I needed to stop my own complaining, as a little toe pain is probably not that difficult to deal with. By the time I got back to TxDOT I was just happy to be done. It was a bit before 9am, and a bit warmer than when we started.

I can't say enough about the group of 8 women that I ran with. Even though at first we started off too slow, and made a bathroom break at about 1 mile, it was really their supportiveness that got me to the end in mostly one piece.  Miles 9, 10 and 11 were a big struggle for me, but they didn't let me curl up on the sidewalk and die like I would have wanted.  After I got home, the post-run pains started to set in, and I was mostly a mess for the rest of the day. I'm likely down two toenails, I have a blister, and a few other complications (that I hope will be prevented by something new I'll try next time).  But in the end, it was much better than I had feared.

Two more runs left, shorter than this, and then San Antonio with 29,999 other participants. I'm starting to think I might be able to do this.

sidewalk scenes and black limousines

I went for a run this morning, a longer run than I've ever done before.  In retrospect, I've come a long way.  I was never a runner.  If we go way back to when I was younger, I've always had some knee, foot, shin trouble.  Don't let anyone tell you that being short doesn't come with it's own special set of problems.  My knees used to hurt all the time when I was little, something about growing pains without the growth.  My ankles click all the time, something about a growth gap that never closed and air slips out.  I have fallen arches, which used to cause my feet to "get tired" really easily.  It's these arches that caused the hip pain in late April, keeping me out of the running game for a few months.

This morning I ran farther than I've ever run before, but still far short of the 13.1 I'm going to have to run in a month.  I was scared this morning, I had trouble getting out the door, I wanted to quit.  But.  I didn't.  Thanks to my Dad I have some new equipment (ohh, ahhh) and no longer have to carry my huge ancient broken mp3 player.  And thanks to the people over at RunTex and the water stations they set-up each weekend, I didn't have to carry any water.  I enjoyed the freedom of running with empty hands and tunes blasting along a Town Lake loop.  I still don't run well.  I start off too fast, and die out too soon.  I started with two 15/1's, but then I had to switch to 10/1's.  I left my right leg* somewhere around mile 5 and I was definitely doing something worse than 8/2's at that point.  By the end there were certainly some 1/4's happening.  There was a lot of 'please, just can you make it one more minute', 'please, can you make it to that bridge' and a lot more 'Oh, f@#%!' when I finally gave up and walked.

But once I got back to the Mopac bridge none of that mattered, because I made it and I was still standing.  For the first time I had a glimmer of hope that I can actually do this.  Which is good, because I paid for it, and I've given up beer in order to train.  And if you know me at all there are two things I hate to see wasted, money and beer.  Particularly at this time of year!!

*For those of you who are paying attention, I did say my right leg, and it had been my left hip that was ailing before.  It seems that all the attention to the left leg has made the right leg feel neglected, and now it's crying out for help.  I have a bit of pain when I run, but sometimes if I can run through it it goes away - or I learn to ignore it better.  I'm fairly certain I know what's causing it, and I've already gotten the appropriate things to try and fix it. 

The Off-Season

It's true, I gave up on posting about the KitShickers about one or two games too early. We ended out our season with a 3-2-2 record, and no hopes of making the finals. I've spent my offseason mastering the fine art of physical therapy, which I successfully graduated this week. I was "diagnosed" with IlioPsoas Tendonitis, and have been unable to run since sometime in early June. When I began PT the doc instantly pointed out my flat feet as the original cause, but indicated that my tight quads, IT band, calves, along with a significant decrease in range of motion throughout my hips and knees were keeping me in pain. He prescribed a regimen of stretching, and some combination ice/heat therapies for the iliacus tendon. This week, for the first time since I've been going, the heel from each foot was able to reach my butt - and thus, I was discharged. Only after agreeing to continue stretching for the rest of my life. Along with some new kicks and hot arch supports, I'm ready for action....sometime. Currently I'm only allowed to swim, which I've been doing as often as I can. In a few weeks I'll see the sports med doc again, who will recommend when and how I can get back to running. Since I'm now severely behind on my training.

And it looks like I've healed just in time. The Kitshickers are back, and ready for some fall-ball. We debated a name change, ROD said 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', however DI and LD and some others agreed, 'maybe it IS broke' - but we decided to stick with Kitshickers for one more season.

We've got a plan - there will be a kicking practice, and a catching practice. There will be team knee socks, and at-bat songs. There will be beer, and lots of Rudy's BBQ plastic cups. There will be winning, lots and lots of winning.

Stay tuned!

The Kickball Diaries, volume 4.

Week 5. Kitshickers vs Sandy Clams.
Game time: 5/8/2008, 8:10pm
Game Conditions: day after the tornado, dryer than you'd have though.
Result: T 3-3
Record: 1-1-2

Let me start of this week's Kickball Diaries with an excerpt from the Austin Sports and Social Clubs webpage:

Good news for the Sandy Clams, who look to make it four wins in a row versus the Kitschickers (1-1-1).

The Sandy Clams are the only undefeated team, with a 3-0 record, and apparently we are the underdogs who are assumed to lie down and let them walk right into 4-0. Well, I wasn't having it. We tried some positive thinking before the game, just because they are undefeated does not mean they are perfect, it simply means that they haven't lost yet. They also haven't played us yet.

The game was unremarkable. We were up, we were down, we were tied, we were back up, we were tied. The ump was a dipshit, he was grumpy and yelling and he tried to end our game early. We nearly had a two-team bench clearing brawl versus the ump just to get him to let us play one more inning - the FIFTH inning.

I contributed next to nothing, and I honestly don't remember many plays of the game. I remember that I played a variety of positions and hardly knew what I was doing out there. I also know that now, thanks to us, the Sandy Clams will not have a perfect season.

I also know that our team is in trouble. Here is our latest injury report:
one player is out with a busted knee, likely needing surgery
one player went home with an ankle three times the size it was when he arrived
one player recently had surgery on her kicking-toe
one player is going to play through her injured hip, for the sake of the team

We're in some sore shape, but damn it if we aren't playing a perfect .500 ballgame, kids!