Well alot has happened since my last blog. First I had a day where I was very disappointed in myself. I was going to meet my friend Katee for a run one morning in early May after work. At this point in time I was able to run 70 minutes without walking. That is a huge thing for me. I also had told Katee that I did not wheeze when I ran anymore. Just to back up for a minute last year when I ran with Katee she told me I had exercise induced asthma (which I denied) and she told me to he an inhaler (which I did not do) boy did I make a liar out of myself. So we meet and it is the first hot humid day of the year. I could not even run for 15 minutes without walking and I was wheezing. Katee said "I thought you said you didn't wheeze any more." My response "I..ha..dnt...un...till...to...day!" What can I say gotta love Missouri weather. The more I have ran in the heat and humidity the more my body has become use to it. However I still prefer to run on a nice Spring day, but spring seemed to skip Kansas City this year.
I also suffered an injury in May. I was training on some hills and as I was running down the hill my left knee started to ache. Now this normally would not be a big deal because when you run you always ache somewhere ask any runner. On this day it was a different kind of pain. I was limping and could hardly walk and I was in tears. This is a big deal because I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. So I limped to my car went home and iced my knee. One thing I learned from one of my favorite running magazine was running aches should never hurt when you are not running. If they do you need to rest your body. I was in severe pain even when I was working so I decided to take some time off from running for a few weeks so I would not worsen my injury. So as I was resting my body hospital hill race was getting closer. I called Katee and told her that I really felt I needed to run the 5k at the hospital hill run because I had not finished my training and did not feel I could run the 10k. We decided to think about it and would change the race if we had to at the expo when we pick up our racing bibs.
I want to take this time to tell you how awesome my friend Katee is. She is an amazing runner and she always runs with me when in reality she could smoke me. I appreciate her and her friendship and she is a great racing coach too.
So when we went to pick up our racing bibs we were still undecided about the race we would run. They told us we could change the race the next morning. We decided we would sleep on it. The expo was so awesome they had vendors for Garmin, Nike the list goes on. Addison was in love! There was so many things that little girl wanted. I can not blame her. There was so many things I wanted. I bought a spibelt. If you are a runner I recommend one of these. It is a little belt that snaps on and it had a little pocket that is so stretches you can fit a whole pack of note cards in the belt. When I was running I had my drivers license, credit card, keys, and my Ipod and headphones because my Ipod DIED on me that morning! Anyway this belt is awesome and not bulky like the fanny pack. Also I bought these headbands called Bondibands and they rock they absorb the sweat and they come in so many colors and patterns I could not decide so I let Addison pick them out. I bought 3.
So the next morning I decided to run the 5k. So now the problem was trying to find someone to help us change our race. Just to give you and idea there was over 7,000 runners in this race and they all had family members there to cheer them on. So finally I found someone and asked how to change races. He told me I could run whatever race I want but if I won the 10K and only ran the 5K I would not get the prize. I looked at him and said "That will NOT be a problem." I was right the person who ran the 10K beat me by 10 minutes when I only ran the 5k. I can not believe how fast some people are. Anyway the race was hard. I remember thinking I had ran "the hill" then I saw "the hill and about lost it. Katee said its ok and handed me an inhaler...lol...so I was the asthmatic running up the hill with an inhaler. When I was running down the hill I hurt my knee again and figured out that I run down the hills to hard and the pounding causes pain. I finished and it was an amazing feeling the clock time was 45:00 min but my official time was 39:36. In a race this large your time does not start until you cross the start line but when you have 7,000 runners in a race you can not all start at the same time that is why each runner has 2 times. I will take 39 minutes. Not bad for a knee injury and the first time on hospital hill. I whore my "I conquered the hill" shirt with pride that day, as I will everyday. Then we ate free BBQ and I was home by 9am.
This week has been a tough one for my family and I. Tomorrow it will be one year since our beautiful Jase went to heaven. I love that little boy so much and miss him everyday. I will never be the same because he died, but I am a better person because he lived.
