When last I wrote, it was snowing. We got a good one, too. I never bothered to check the official tally because it's depressing either way. Although I'll admit that for a few seconds yesterday as I set off on a little run on the once-again snow-covered driveway so see the snow-covered trees in the sun, I actually thought it was kind of pretty. You know when it's prettier though? December, like around Christmas when you still think snow is kind of fun. But hey, since the sun is so high in the sky these days, by the end of the day the driveway was no longer covered in snow. No, it was slush instead. And today, thanks to rain, it is heavier, sloppier slush, but there is a bit less of it.
Yes, this morning there was rain and lots of it. But that at least is a step in the right direction because rain does not need to be shoveled or cleaned off the car, and it tends not to make your early-morning drive to the pool treacherous. Apparently there was some freezing rain in places, but aside from the aforementioned slush-covered driveway, the roads were fine. And I think rain helps to melt the snow, so I guess I can deal with it. And the knowledge that three weeks from tomorrow I am headed to southern California for my first tri of the season. It seems impossible that it is already that close, especially considering the mounds of slush I just had to dodge on my run, but it is.
The only thing that really makes me nervous is that it was just about this time last year that I got injured. It was the injury that sent me on a downward spiral of epic proportions, and it was an injury to a part of my body I didn't even know I had. It was a day or two after St. Patrick's Day, and I was feeling pretty good about my running progress. I was doing winter track workouts and getting faster. My first race was a mere week and a half away. I went out on the most basic, average run ever. Just an out-and-back route that I had run hundreds of times at a comfortable pace. Inevitably, if you are going to get injured on a run, it will happen when you are as far from home as possible. My 7-mile jaunt had reached just beyond the turnaround so I could head back home, shower and get to work. Slowly this strange pain began to develop way down in my lower back on the right side, really more in the glute. Huh, never felt that before. I kept on going because, well, I still had over 3 miles to go and what else was I supposed to do?
I stopped to see if I could stretch it out, maybe it was cramping. Ok, well, that didn't help in the slightest. I tried that a couple more times and then decided to just sort of limp/run the rest of the way and figure it out later. If I walked it would take too long, and walking didn't seem to hurt any less. Well, by the time I got out of the shower I could barely even walk. I was holding on to walls for support. I went in to work and tried to hide the tears that threatened to well up whenever I had to get up and move around. Partly due to the pain, but partly because I was so worried about what I had done to myself and how long this was going to last. The thought of walking 10 feet to the copier was enough to scare me.
I knew how close the race was, and a tiny part of me thought that maybe this would just go away and I'd be ok to race. That afternoon I went home and even thought that maybe I'd be able to get in my bike workout since it was a nice day. I didn't even make it a mile before I turned around and rode home, again in tears. What was I going to do? The next morning I tried swimming, and even that hurt. Not so much kicking but just the physical act of trying to keep my legs up. I did the entire workout with a pull buoy because I had to do something or I was going to go completely out of my mind.
I didn't get to race. I took the trouble to pack up and bring my bike anyway, just in case there was some sort of miracle, but deep down I knew. I met some friends out there at the airport who hadn't seen me in a while and they noticed I was limping and I told them that maybe I'd still race, but I knew what would happen on Saturday morning. I knew not to bother with carbo-loading or making sure to stay hydrated.
So that was my first and so far only experience with not doing a race that I had signed up for. Well, unless you count in 2003 when I had signed up to run the Los Angeles marathon when I lived there, but I moved back to NH a few weeks before the race and didn't go back for it. I will say that I did enjoy not getting in that freezing cold ocean and not being nervous about anything, and since I had registered I had access to the transition area and got some really good pictures, but I hated watching. It really hit me when I was watching the runners and I saw the sign for the finish line and the turn-around and I wished I could be out there running.
A few weeks later when I finally got an appointment with someone since it wasn't going away I found out I had injured my sacroilliac joint on my right side. Again, who knew I had one of those? Never heard of it before then. I hadn't run more than a few jogging test steps through the living room in five weeks. I could finally bike and swimming didn't hurt as much, but I had signed up for a whole lot of triathlons, not aqua-bikes. I was panicked about missing so much running at such a key time. I started running for about 20 mintues at a time, still in pain but apparently not making things worse. I ran the Big Lake half marathon two weeks after I had started running again and experienced minor pain in my SI joint, but major pain in my untrained run legs and even greater pain to my psyche as I finished nearly 30 minutes slower than I otherwise might have. A week after that I finally had a pain-free run. I wasn't sure I'd ever have one of those again. But reality set in: I had a lot of catching up to do.
You often hear stories about people who are out with injuries for months at a time and then still somehow come back and have great races. I was not one of those people. Really the mental damage was far worse for me than the physical. That never helps. I spent the rest of the season setting new personal worsts. Well, I never actually went slower than my first half ironman, but I was close. And I sure has heck set a new personal worst for the half marathon, in the form of a run that took longer than my 56-mile bike had. Now that takes talent... wait, I mean complete lack of it. Timberman 2008 was definitely the worst race experience I have ever had. Although limping the final 3 miles in Lake Placid in the pouring rain to finish close to 90 minutes later than I am capable of wasn't a picnic either.
So that one stupid day in March nearly a year ago set me off on that really fun downward spiral. I had a couple of other little random injury-type things happen, again to things I didn't know I had (there's a cuboid bone in my foot? You don't say?) I put on a lot of weight because who needs to be careful about what they're eating when it doesn't matter anyway? I used to be way heavier than I am now, and certainly even way heavier than my recent indiscretions, so my body certainly knows what it's like to be fat.
Somehow, I kept going. I absolutely thought about giving this all up entirely, thinking that I couldn't possibly get back to where I was. I thought I had screwed up just badly enough that there was now no going back. To tell you the truth, I'm still not entirely convinced, but I've got some people who seem to believe that I can, so I'm going to give it another shot. After spectating in Kona this year rather than racing, I was reminded how much I want to get back there.
So I signed on to get coached by Jesse at QT2 Systems, who for some strange reason actually wanted me on the team after my awesome 2008 racing season. I am not sure he knew exactly what he was getting into, because what he got to start was certainly nothing remotely close to the 2006 Lake Placid winner. But he coached me anyway and told me it would get better. It's taken a few months, as I started back in November, but a funny thing has been happening lately: things have been getting better. I'm relentlessly hard on myself, and nothing is really ever good enough so I wouldn't really allow myself to be happy with the small bits of progress that were made in the beginning. But lately, I've finally started to see some numbers I like and can actually be happy with. Am I fast? No. Am I close to where I was before? No. But lots of progress has been made, and for the first time in a very long time, it actually seems like it might be possible to get close to where I was before. I just have to make sure that I don't hurt myself again.
California last year was the beginning of the end for me. This year I am just hoping that it is a new beginning.
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