Keep On Keeping On

Saturday was a disaster. At least by my standards. Clearly my Asics (neutral) are not going to cut it as long as my ankle is still screaming bloody murder on the medial (interior) side. I don't really have an issue when wearing my Saucony's (stability) I guess because they have firm support under my arches and thus my ankle. It really is the damnedest thing; the ligament I damaged is fine (slightly swollen, but not painful) and then inside of my ankle is so not fine. I must have impinged something. I spent Saturday gimping it.

My parents came to visit on Saturday and organized an egg hunt in our living room (it rained on Saturday) much to my son's enormous delight. Easter morning I awoke to "poops in the potty" as is usual. What I wasn't prepared for was the innocent looking, chocolate covered cherub that greeted me once I could manage to open my eyes. "Did you eat the entire chocolate bunny?" Reply, "Yes." (as if to say, of course, what a stupid question, mommy). It was true, the evidence was all over his face. I had meant to mention the night before that he should wait until we were up, but had completely forgotten and left the contraband in the basket, out in the open. It is no wonder he didn't eat his breakfast. The big mystery is how he managed to remain "normal" under the circumstances. I expected to have him bouncing off the walls. Clearly he can hold his sugar (like his mom, makes me so proud...sniff). I had to hide the other bunny my parents bought for him...for his own good....not that I would ever eat it.....I'm only thinking of his well being.....

I went to swim on Monday morning at 6 am. I hate getting up, but I love it once I finally do. I did a mile in the pool working in some drills. I also decided to try a 400 mtr (1/4 mile) continuous swim just to see if I could. It was no problem. We haven't been training for any distance so far, mostly drills so I wasn't sure whether I could. I didn't time myself, I just wanted to see if I could swim that long without calling for help.

Last night we had our group run in Central Park. It ended up being a trail run on the bridle path. In the rain, no less. UGH! All I could think was how I was going to twist my ankle yet again. This was an out and back (OAB) run for a total of 40 minutes. The "out" had stops at every 4 minutes to do squats for a minute then repeat up to 20 minutes, then turn around and just run the return with no squats. A couple of things here. As soon as I started running I felt the urge to pee. Sorry, but there it is. Now, normally, this might be ok if I was someone who had never been pregnant or given birth. As anyone who has knows, there is a certain point in which you enter the "Danger Zone". By this I mean, you seriously need to consider where the closest bathrooms are in any given radius. Once you have given birth, your ability to hold your water has become severely compromised. And ladies, don't think that a C-section provides you an escape from this curse, I had one, and there's still an issue of leakage if pushed to the limits. Add the fact that I am running on top of this urgent feeling....I think you can imagine my distress. I was mentally trying to calculate where the public facilities were, just in case, and plotting my emergency exit from the park based on my location and the street I live on, if this became my only alternative. The good news is this kept my mind off of the running I was doing. The bad news....well there really isn't any. I know you were expecting me to say next that I had peed down my leg or something. Given the rain, I would have gotten away with it. However, that didn't happen, although I had a couple of "that was close" moments. The kegels are paying off.

Blindly running. This was my other distraction. I should not have been wearing my glasses in the rain. Note to self: contacts when it rains. They were fogging up, it was getting dark, they were wet. I kept having to wipe them off to see where I was going. I didn't want to land in a rut and twist my ankle again. All of these things were enough to keep my mind busy and I managed to finish the run without too much trouble. Ok, there were a couple of hills that were killing me, but I soldiered on while others stopped. I ended up running for 4.02 miles. The pace on my last two miles were 9.5 minutes. This is amazing to me because that is where the big hills were. I am pretty proud of myself for finishing the run without stopping, and managing to get that kind of pace despite hills. I hope one day I can look back on this and think, "that was nothing." For now, I'm stoked.

I have to mention something else here. I recently bought some compression socks, right around the time I effed up my ankle. I love them. I should also mention, these are not recovery socks. I am not sure I can rationalize spending $30-60 for a pair of socks. I decided, maybe wrongly, that the medical compression socks, which cost me $14.50 on Amazon, were just as good. I run in them, I sleep in them, I sit and work in them. My calves feel like they are being hugged. I need to try them with the magic tights. Perhaps I'll be "faster than a speeding bullet" then.