Chicago Marathon Training: Week 10 (Injuries and Awakenings)

If distance running was a product, it would come with the following prominently written on the label: WARNING – You WILL get injured. Every runner I know who has been at it awhile has a war story - hamstring injuries, plantar fasciitis, shin splints, knee pain. True devotees to the sport seem to spend equal parts time training and trying to keep their bodies healthy. Because of this, when I started my training for Chicago I was alert to the possibility that at some point my body might call an injury timeout. What I did not expect was that the injury would come not from running, but from a game of hopscotch.

Yep. Can’t make this stuff up.

In a weird twist of fate involving my failure to properly teach my children schoolyard games when they were young, my son’s birthday, a trip to Disneyland, and the promise of a Mickey Mouse sticker, I wound up teaching my 15-year old son how to play a game of hopscotch by demonstrating the game, and in the process jacked up my Achilles tendon.

In the words of my coach after I told him the story: “Hopscotch – the marathon runner’s number 1 enemy!” (You’ve now been warned).

The next day I was scheduled to run 13 miles. By mile two, I called it. The pain was too much. The uncertainty about what other damage I might be doing was too much. The fear that something so ridiculous might derail my marathon was too much.

And so, in what can only be described as a “runner’s walk of shame”, I turned around to begin the long walk home with tears in my eyes, a full water bottle in my hand, head hanging low, sporting a “Run Big” motivational shirt, having barely broken a sweat.

Through the magic of social media, I pretty much invited everyone I know to my pity party, and on the side began the process of trying to heal. And then, in the midst of it all, I was on the receiving end of the following post by a teammate running with me for the American Cancer Society: “Ran 18 miles today and I was thinking about how humid it was, how I wanted to be done then I realized I would be done in 3 hours. No matter how bad I felt it doesn’t compare to fighting cancer, to seeing how weak and sick my mom was every day from chemo … So everyone train hard and appreciate that you can!”

And there is was - my kick in the ass to shake it off already.

I am running the Chicago Marathon for my Dad who lost his life to cancer. I run because he can’t. I run because I cannot stand the thought of one more daughter or son, or wife or husband, or friend losing their loved one to this disease. And when I run, I can’t help but reflect on my dad’s absence: how badly I want to talk with him again. How much I wish that he could see me cross the damn finish line and give me a hug.

But my teammate’s post, that made me start to think of something else – not his end, but my Dad’s courage and his fight. A man who feared and avoided needles and doctors visits at all costs, put up with chemo until his body simply couldn’t take it any more. When he was totally depleted from the disease, he somehow managed to find the strength to walk around the block with his grandchildren.

When he was incredibly frail, with no remaining reserves that day, and his family urged him to go back to the hotel before he simply could not because of the effort required, he dug his heels in to stay at the SF Giant's ballpark to witness an epic Giant's win in the bottom of the 10th … and he did it because THAT day surrounded with his family at the ballpark was his idea of living and brought him joy.

My Dad, and every other person I know who has faced cancer, summoned every ounce of courage and strength at their disposal, for the sake of doing every thing that they were capable of doing every day. To live.

And if they can do that, and do it with the grace, humor, perseverance, positivity, strength, and determination that I have witnessed, then I surely can get over my damn self and a hopscotch injury.

This injury - it woke me up again.

There is life to celebrate.

There are bigger things to conquer.

To learn more about the American Cancer Society's work and how to donate to support the ACS, please visit the Team DetermiNation website.

WelcomE!

The obligatory "about me" ...

I am a California attorney, wife and mother to two teenagers. Thanks to some fierce prodding by my brother and unwavering support from my family, I started to write again (hence, the blog), and to run again (training for the New York City Marathon). After all, if you are going to get in the game, you might as well go all-in. You can find out more about my story here.

November 1, 2019

This Is Fifty

When I first started this writing space and was trying on different names for what ultimately became Midlife Run, I struggled. Solidly in my forties, the idea of attaching the word “midlife” to anything seemed like an unwelcome, uncomfortable stretch reserved for the after-fifty set. But I settled into the name, comforted by the knowledge that I was on the “early side” of midlife. Not so any more. Last month we dropped our youngest at college thus marking the beginning of the “empty nester years” and today, as I start to write this, I turn fifty. I am solidly, undeniably, in midlife.

August 19, 2019

It's Almost Here: The Empty Nest!

In my memory, I cannot think of a more seismic shift in our marriage than when we had children. The first sign that our world was about to be rocked actually happened when our first bun was still in the oven and we were standing outside of a Denver bar. It wasn’t late, we were with good friends, and good times were being had by all, especially by those (not me) enjoying a night of craft beer and pool. By that point in my pregnancy, my body was changing and bulging, I had given up caffeine, alcohol, and hot baths and traded them for binge-eating apples. My pregnancy and impending motherhood were feeling tangibly real in a way that it wasn’t (yet) for my husband. And that night, with festivities just warming up, I was standing by the car asking my husband not to go in and to come home with me instead because I was exhausted and sick with pregnancy. If you ask him now, he doesn’t remember that night. I do. In his eyes and in his body-language was a man coming to terms with our new and changing reality. As we looked at each other we silently acknowledged that our lives would never be the same. What we want, what we do, how we see the world, and how we prioritize our lives no longer involved just the two of us. There was going to be a third member of our family, and eventually a fourth, and nothing, ever, not even a night out with friends, would be quite so simple any more.

May 20, 2019

Lucky Me (Guest Post by Andrew J. Pridgen)

My excuses for why I’m not going to perform well in a race while I toe the starting line roll up like opening credits in a movie. Written by: Lack of preparation, Directed by: Insecurity, Executive produced by: My shoes don’t feel right, Casting by: I can barely breathe and my ankle already hurts. Starring: Me.

April 3, 2019

Walk Slowly with Me

Our family is not one to stand still. We fall easily into the pace of rushed crowds on New York City streets, and we barrel ahead in pursuit of goals. We move forward, and then we move forward again. Even our family walks seem to be driven, marching along familiar neighborhood paths, distracted by conversation, and, for the past twelve years, led by our trusty furry companion, Lucy, whose entry into our family was the very thing that initiated this nightly routine.

January 13, 2019

New Year's Resolution: Do One Thing

I have a shrink-wrapped cork board leaning against the wall to the right of my desk, clearly within view. It’s been standing sentinel in the same spot for months, waiting for me to deal with it and daring me to get on with it already. Its purpose is to be a vision board of sort, a place for me organize my goals, to lay them out in a way that my left-leaning brain can process and check them off, mixed together with other bits designed to spark my still developing right-brain to creativity. I look at that cork board regularly with the same dread that someone with writer’s block stares at a blinking curser on a blank screen.

December 9, 2018

NYC Marathon: Challenge, Growth, and Celebration

When you tell someone – especially a non-runner someone – that you are going to run a marathon, you’re generally met with some version of a respectful “that’s great … good for you.” Contrast, when you tell someone that you are going to run the NYC Marathon, there’s a special, heightened aura that surrounds what surely, inevitably, will be nothing short of an epic race.

November 3, 2018

Life’s a Journey ... The Road to NYC Marathon 2018

Mostly, though, there has been an extraordinarily emotional undercurrent to this training cycle because it is impossible for me to look forward to this marathon without looking back to my 2015 NYC Marathon, and examining with wonder how one stacked series of events can make your whole life pivot until you find yourself on a trajectory you never could have imagined.

September 15, 2018

Creating Space, Building Strength

In my ordinary life, there is room for writing, for running, for meaningful conversations, and for balance. My life right now is not ordinary. It is frenetic, and it is all but consumed by a single work endeavor. It leaves me starving for sleep and time with family, it led me to write a middle of the night SOS to my coach about my NYC marathon training, and it is accompanied by a level of stress and adrenaline that can keep me going now, but in the long run is unsustainable. Gratefully, I am not alone in this experience, and I have my ultimate support crew (husband and family) behind me.

June 27, 2018

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Because There Will Be Plenty of Big Stuff: Reflections on 25 Years of Marriage

Certain milestones simply make me pause. Today is a big one – our 25th wedding anniversary. By any measure, that is a legitimately long time to spend marching through life next to the same person. It has me looking back in wonder about how we got to this point, looking forward trying to guess what is ahead, and reflecting broadly about what I know now about the two of us together and the life-long project of building a marriage. Unsurprisingly, I have a few thoughts.

March 29, 2018

That Family Place

When my Dad was young, the annual family pilgrimage took them to Lake Tahoe during the summer, where his family would stay in a small cabin on the north shore, the boys would catch crawdads between the boulders jutting out from the Lake, and skip smooth, flat rocks over the water’s surface. I know these things because when my parents took my brother and me to the same lake shore, and years later after the next generation joined us, my parents would tell the stories. The connection to Lake Tahoe is now four generations deep, and with every new year and new family member or friend who joins us, the memories deepen and years of family stories from this special place transform into epic lore.