Where the Hell Have You Been

   
     Well it has been a little over a month since my last post and I want to apologize for not being more active for you all.  I have just struggling to feel any sort of being or purpose lately when it comes to my blog.  Every time I think "that would be a good topic to write about" the desire just hasn't been there for me to do it.  Ever since I was told I needed surgery I have been down in the dumps with the whole "why me" argument.  I am sure the lack of exercise that my body is use to is having an effect on my mood, but when you add in being inundated all day every day on Facebook and other blogs about others that are hitting these great milestones, running some great races and just plain enjoying life doing what they love while you can't doesn't help the situation.  Don't get me wrong, I am so happy and proud to see so many people making healthy changes in their lives, but it is hard not to fight that feeling of jealousy and anger at my situation, and I think I have let it get to me so bad that I have been disengaging from almost everything in my life.  More and more the idea of just coming home from work, sitting on the couch and doing nothing but watch Netflix has become my norm, and I don't like it.

     Since I can't run I have dusted off the bicycle and given cycling a shot.  Mandy and I have gone on a few 2-3 mile rides together, but she likes to just relax and enjoy the view when she rides, which I don't mind since we are spending time together, but to me that is the equivalent of walking vs. running.  I have managed a 9 mile and 13 mile rides at a brisk pace, which felt pretty good, despite my ass getting sore. (#) I would like to get out there more, but really the only time I have to ride, other than my day off is in the early morning when its dark, so until I spend some money on lights for the bike, that is out.

     Time to change the attitude and think more positive about things.  I am sure the last thing anyone once to read about is my fucking pity party on how I can't run right now, when there is so much more going on in the world to deal with.  I have to admit, what you are reading now is the third time I have written this post, and before deleting most of it, I think typing those previous drafts really helped.  How you ask?  Well when I read it back to myself, all I heard was a guy that wants something to come easy to him, feels like he is owed something, wants others to feel sorry for him and say it is ok to be like this.  I know this feeling well, and you know what this feeling has gotten me in the past?  I'll tell you  142 POUNDS OF PURE WASTE OF SPACE!  That's right, the last time I felt this way was before this journey ever started and when I didn't want to put in any of the effort, but gain all the results.  

     My plan for the blog's future is to do a daily or every other day post about my surgery experience and recover, but until then my post will be few and far between and may have absolutely nothing to do with running. There is a little more than three weeks till I have my surgery, so until then nothing but living life and concentrating on the positives in life! 

What Could It Be?

     So after last Sunday's run I contacted my physical therapist and gave her the bad news of how the run went.  She pretty much said what I new she would say and what I was thinking as I walked/limped back home, "you should have rested today and not pushed yourself".  She wanted me to rest on Monday and Tuesday, then attempt an easy 2 mile run on Wednesday.  

     I woke up on Wednesday and my hip joint area was aching a little bit.  I thought about not attempting the two miles, but I stretched out and went anyway.  I kept slow, around a 10 min pace and did fairly well, but I would get an occasional twinge of aching type pain.  Nothing to make me stop or want to stop, just reminding me that its there.  She wanted me to stop at the end of the first mile and do a few light stretches, so when I hit mile one I stopped and did the stretches and turned tail and headed for home.  At mile 1.66, that same twinge of aching type pain with an occasional sharper pain (nothing intense) would come and go much more frequently till I finished the full two miles.  When I was done, the aching pain hung around and lingered for awhile afterwards.  

     I contacted my PT and she decided it would be best if I came in for another session that afternoon.  She seemed concerned that the pain was coming on sooner and sooner with each run.  So after a lot of questions and the usual pushing, pulling and twisting the theory changed from a muscle issue to possibly being a tear to the hip joint cartilage know as the acetabular labrum or labral tear.  Basically from what I gathered on the Internet, that this is the cartilage that separates the ball from the socket in the hip join.  

     Obviously my PT wasn't making a diagnosis because the only true why to know if it is a labral tear is to have an expensive MRI, but based on the symptoms I have described to her she thought this to have a good probability.  According to her and what I read online, there are two main ways of treating this.  First is a non surgical option, which means a lot of physical therapy and strength training to strengthen the muscles around the hip to better support it and minimize the onset of pain.  The other is surgery which then would be followed by lots of physical therapy and no guarantee that the pain will end and running can continue.

     So where do I go from here?  Well because she is on the fence about it being a labral tear we decided for me to take one week off from all activities and completely rest it.  It was recommended, but not prescribed to take whatever anti inflammatory I am comfortable with taking and icing the area several times a day.  Next Wednesday we will talk and reevaluate our options.

     Part of me really wants to pay the money to have the MRI done just so I know for sure what I am dealing with, but the other part of me knows I don't really have the cash to pay for a test that could, even with my insurance, cost me 1-2 thousand dollars.  Mostly though, this is turning into a real test for my patience.  This could be a very small blip on my running life, but damn it, when you are going through it, it feels like an eternity.       

Where Is The Nearest Wall

     Man I can't tell how great things are going right now.  I have been in such a great mood and run all kinds of miles and I have a dozen races on the schedule coming up, life couldn't be better with my running right now..........is what I really want to say right now, however this couldn't be further from the truth.  

     I visited my physical therapist on Wednesday to get my leg checked out.  She went through a series of exercises along with a lot of stretching, twisting and pulling to try and loosen things up.  I was instructed to attempt a 3 mile run with a quick stretching break at the end of each mile.  Thursday's run went pretty well and Saturday's run went even better which gave me the confidence to head out for another run this morning.  Well that is what I get for thinking I know what is best, because I didn't even make it to a mile and a half before pain set in and a short mile later I decided to shut it down and walk the last half mile home.

     I started to think of all my goals I set for this year and started to feel so defeated and depressed.  When I developed my knee injury, I thought I hit the ultra low point, but I think having come back from an injury to have another one pop up so quickly really can send you to a new low.  I really felt like just beating my head against the wall, because at the end of the day, I really don't care about my time goals or PRs, I just want to get back to a regular running schedule.  I got into this to lose weight and now I need it to maintain my weight so that is why I think I take it so hard when I can't run.   

Yeah, this is how I feel right now dealing with nagging injuries.

      So I went back and looked at my goals I set for myself for this year and even though I actually have accomplished two of those goals, neither of which was a running goal.  Here is the list of goals for the year:

Get back to regular running

2015 or more total miles for the year

Run a trail race

37 miles on my 37th birthday

Complete an Ultra Marathon

Complete the Detroit Marathon

Hit my goal weight of 173 lbs

Maintain my weight within the range of 168 - 178

Try more fruits & vegetables

     I hit my weight goal, tried more fruits & vegetables and I could even say I have maintained my weight within range, but I won't count that one till the end of the year.  With the exception of one of them the rest are being thrown out the window because I think I am trying to hard to do to much to soon.  Getting back to regular running is my first and only goal, because if I can't do that, the Detroit marathon isn't going to happen, and I really want to do that one and run with my friends.  I am going to rest tomorrow and talk to my PT again and see where I go from here.

GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon Training Week 5

    

     This week has been a bit a of a struggle for me mentally and physically.  I keep trying to get back to my pre-marathon form with my dedication and my nutrition, but sadly I keep failing myself.  Last week was a little rough and I told myself it is time to make a change, and when I did it lasted a couple of days and petered off.  I think a lot has to do with my current frame of mind.  I keep feeling like I don't have enough time in the day to get everything I either need and/or want to accomplish.  You would think with the weather changing I would be in better spirits and ready to get out and run, but lately that hasn't been the case.  Plus as you may have read from my Thursday post my food intake has become a bit of a problem as well.  I don't want to say I feel depressed because at the end of the day I don't have any real problems that warrant me feeling depressed, but I just kind of do.  For example I woke up early to get my workout in the other day and I looked for every excuse to skip it and go back to bed, or I would tell myself I can get it in after work and by the time I get home that is the last fucking thing I want to do.  I just can't seem to get myself on a schedule that agrees with me and it is aggravating the shit out of me.

 

     Back in the day when I was fat overweight Dean I would try to lose weight and get in shape, and when I'd get started I would be totally focused and disciplined to my goals.  Then after a month or two in I would get sick or something would come up that would sideline me for a short time and I would lose all focus.  I would start to pull the same crap that is happening to me now.  This was my first thought is because I was sidelined for so long due to my injury, which makes total sense, but I worked so hard to get through therapy, so what is the issue?  To answer my own question, I think my priorities and my schedule or lack of a schedule is all out of whack.  My Therapist wrote me a great training plan for the GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon, but I have failed to properly organize it so it fits in with my work schedule.  I really need to sit down and take some time to map out a schedule to get the second half of my training program prioritized along with my other interests.  I mean I only have a little over 40 days till I run the Owens Corning Half Marathon at the Glass City Marathon.  So maybe going back and reviewing the goals I set for this year will get me inspired to bring back pre-marathon Dean.

     So I guess you were wondering when I was going to actually talk about my training for the week.  I am sure you can tell by the picture above and my long preamble above that, that should tell you this week wasn't that great.  I only got 3 days of running in, one cross training day, one strength day and zero yoga.  To most that might sound like I got a lot done, and maybe I am being to hard on myself, but I skipped part or all of my workout on 3 of the 4 days I had something scheduled.  

     My tempo run on Tuesday went fine, but my long run on Thursday could have been better if my legs were not so tired from my strength training on Wednesday.  I started to have some mild knee pain from my IT band in the last two miles and my hamstrings were sore for a couple of days after that.  You can read more about that run here.  Because I skipped Friday and Saturday's workouts I told myself that there would be no excuses, just running.  I had to work so I couldn't do my interval and hill workout at the gym so I ran the intervals on the bike path and used a highway overpass for my hill workout.  I decided to take the long way back to the house and throw in a easy tempo run to do it. Here is a selfie from high above the world on a midwest mountain!

     I saw this quote today and I think it says exactly what I needed to hear right now!

  

Wednesday Weigh In / The Shame Of It All

     Merry Christmas Eve everyone!!  Today is going to be a very busy day for me as I am working 9-2 then I am heading to my sister's for a Christmas Eve get together.  I went ahead and wrote this up last night because I knew I wasn't going to have any time today to write it.  I did however wait till this morning to do my weigh in so I can stay consistent with what numbers I report.  Thank God I waited because if this is what I saw this morning, just think what it would have said if I did it last night.  So lets just get this out of the way right now.

12/24/14 official weigh in

179 lbs

Change: +3.5 lbs

Total loss from heaviest: 138 lbs

Current BMI: 28.0 (overweight)

Change: +.5

      I have debated whether to write about this or not, but after seeing what the scale had to say I think it warranted a truthful response.  So on December 19^th we had our company Christmas pot luck, which is always bad for us food-a-holics because of the smorgasbord of food available.  The pot luck took place during work and being the manager of my department I decided to let my employees go ahead and eat while I covered the department.  I felt that was the right thing to do, but what it did was gave me almost an hour to wait to eat so I was extremely hungry when it was my turn to dive in.  Now of course I was going to enjoy myself, it was a holiday party, so I filled my plate with a sandwich, some chips and cheesy potatoes.  The cheesy potatoes were really good so I went back for seconds, but didn’t over do it. 

 

     Now this is where things went all kinds of wrong.  By this time I was all by myself in the lunch room with a bunch of cookies, brownies, chocolate covered pretzels and buckeyes.  I told myself I could have one cookie and one buckeye, well all that did was start that little tiny snowball rolling down hill.  With no one around for me to feel embarrassed for gorging myself and before I new it I was 5 heavily frosted and sprinkled sugar cookies and 5 rich chocolate & peanut butter buckeyes in.  I had that disgusted ashamed feeling, yet I couldn’t stop myself.  I had to physically walk out of the lunch room to keep from eating any more and yet it was all I could think about.  More! More! More! is all my brain would comprehend.  I started chewing some Extra gum to try and keep myself from going back once the minty flavor of the gum kicked in.  The trick worked, but the damage had already been done.

     Now add to that, Saturday my parents arrived in town for Christmas and the family all met at Fricker’s to eat dinner.  There is not one healthy thing about Fricker’s, but boy does it taste good.  I ended up eating cheese fries and greasy breaded wings like it was no big deal.  Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but because I haven’t been running or getting any exercise recently I am not burning the calories to allow this kind of behavior.

     I have no reason to think this is the beginning of the end and I will slip and slide all the way back to 300 pounds, but it sure did scare me how easy it was.  Especially considering how hard I have worked to get to where I am.  I wasn’t going to write this because it is really fucking embarrassing to admit, but it’s the truth and this is what I struggle with. 

 Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

1000 Miles and Depressed

     Today's run was my first back in two weeks due to my continuous IT Band issues.  I went out without using the IT band isolator strap.  My ultimate goal is to get back to original form so I wanted to see how I would do without it.  I headed out keeping my pace quite slow and just trying to concentrate on my form.  Somewhere around the mile and a half mark I was starting to feel the tightness in my knee with some minor pain.  I hit the turnaround and ended up stopping so I could stretch out the IT band.  I walked for maybe 20 yards and then got back to it with no problems.  As I suspected The pain crept back and I ended up stopping again to stretch things out and walk it out.  Again I was pain free for a little while, but like I was expecting, pain came back.  once I hit the 3 mile mark I gave up and walked the last mile home.

     When I got home I was feeling frustrated and depressed, and realized I was only 1.1 miles away from hitting the 1000mile mark for the year.  I finished my stretches and thought to myself, I am not going to run again for the rest of the year so fuck it I am gonna go out and at least hit the millennium mark for the year.  I geared up and headed down the bike trail for a half mile and turned around to head back.  The whole time I was thinking this a stupid idea to continue to run, but I wanted a victory of some kind today.

  
     Now where do I go from here.  I am officially done for the year.  I have a tattoo apt in a couple of days and combine that with the knee issues I am just going to hang up the shoes till January.  I am also going to seek professional help in the form of a sports physical therapist.  I found out today that in Ohio you don't have to see and get a doctor's note before you can see a SPT, you can go directly to them.  I am going to contact a couple of places and see what I need to do to get started.

The Self Loathing Ramblings of a Frustrated Runner

     When I started running I had no thoughts of running races or setting personal records (PR) all I was trying to do was lose the weight.  As my mileage increased and my per mile times decreased, the idea of actually running a race seemed like the thing to do.  That first year I tried to run every race I could get my hands on.  I was constantly scouring the internet looking for races that I could fit into my schedule, which I know was annoying Mandy quit a bit.  This past summer I put all my training eggs into one basket for the marathon and totally skipped out on a bunch of other smaller local races that I did last year.  I had planned on doing a 10K right in the middle of my training, but thanks to my knee pain I was having at the time, I skipped the race so I could continue to rest my knee.  In fact if it wasn’t for my sister being involved with that 5K a couple of weeks before the marathon, I wouldn’t have even done it.  I put all my focus and energy into preparing for the marathon which is why, I believe, I had such a great race day experience.  I loved every minute of that race and to be quite honest I can’t wait to do another one, but every since that race my running life has been a frustrating chain of events. 

    

     First I have pain in my ankle, then my knee pain comes back while running anything longer than 2-3 miles at a time.  I keep telling myself that I just didn’t let my body heal up enough after the marathon, so I gave myself almost two weeks worth of time to rest and what happens my first run back, freaking knee pain.  Because of this issue, I have missed out on a half marathon I wanted to do and at this point there is know way I am running the local turkey trot on Thanksgiving.  It has really thrown me into a funk right now, mostly because I don’t know what to do.  I know it is my IT band acting up again and I have read every little thing on this issue and no matter what I try nothing seems to work.  Rest seems to be the number one prescribed treatment, but I have read so many stories about people who have rested for 6 months and on their first run back the pain returns.  I have been icing, foam rolling, stretching and no matter what I run two to three miles and the pain returns.

      

     This shit is so frustrating because all I want to do is run.  I keep thinking do I really need to worry about getting faster and setting new PRs?  The primary reason I fell in love with running is because it worked so well in aiding my weight loss.  I would not be anywhere near where I am at with my weight loss if I couldn’t run, that I am sure of.  The thing that I can’t stand is that I can’t run long distances right now, even if I slowed down to a turtle’s pace I would still have pain after a couple miles and long distance is what I am into right now.  Hell I even started researching ultra marathons, but that is a freaking pipe dream with this knee pain.  I had been thinking hard these past couple of weeks on my goals for 2015, I have even started writing about them and was planning on posting it this week, but at this point I don’t even know if consistent running is in my future little lone setting a pretty aggressive time or distance goal.  If I can get this knee pain solved, I think running and having fun doing it will end up being my goal for 2015.  Maybe get back to my attitude from 2013, were I was running any race I can get my hands on. 

      

      A couple of things I have read that can cause IT band syndrome is weak quads and core, shoes and running form.  With this in mind I have started a body weight exercise routine that will hopefully help my entire body get stronger.  I am also going to go this week and look into a new pair of shoes.  I have been hearing great things about Altra brand shoes helping to correct and promote good running form with their zero drop design, so I am seriously considering  going them a try as well.  The last thing I am going to do after I give myself a little more rest is keep my runs short, 2-3 miles max.  I think if I keep my IT band from getting irritated while getting stronger eventually I will be able to get back to long distances again.  At least I hope so, I got a lot of important races coming up in April and early May.