looking back, and ahead

friday evening was kind of a "down" night for us -- chilling out, watching the olympics, and while still a bit frustrated about the news earlier in the day, i was thinking back to when I started feeling the pain in my leg.  An exact conversation popped into my mind, with the exact location! One of the benefits of blogging... aside from my own personal therapy lol.  I thought back to one of the group runs in June, which I blogged about here.  It was about a 2k warm up until we hit a conservation park, where it was a gravel path and very hilly.  I've run it before, always a challenging route.

During the warm up, we cross 2 major intersections before hitting one of the side streets.  At the 2nd intersection, while waiting for the light to change so that we could continue, I remember feeling the pain in my left shin.  I bent down to rub it, felt a lump, at which time i thought was a knot.  I asked Ann, one of the girls from my group, who I ran with most of the way during our first 1/2 marathon, what a stress fracture would feel like.  She asked me "why, do you think you have one?"  I replied that I wasn't sure, but had a really sore shin.  This being one of her first runs after her second 1/2 marathon which she did in May, (the one i was also going to do with her), she was ready to go...  running at full speed.  I told her to go ahead as there would be no way to keep up with her.  I didn't last much longer, but should have turned around at the first sign of sharp pain and gone back to the car.  I would run a bit, then walk a lot, and walked the last 4k.

Thinking it was shin splints, i gave it a few days rest, a little bit of pressure a few days later while riding my bike, but it just hasn't gone away.  Surely I haven't given it a chance to heal properly, not knowing what it was.  The pain during that night was a lot, but it wasn't excruciating, the way i thought stress fractures might be.  I have run since with no pain, and had some very good runs, walked with no pain, so I really didn't think it would end up like this.

Anyway, still hurting to walk a lot.  Last night we went to a wedding for friends of ours.  I wore flat shoes, because wearing any sort of heals would be an accident waiting to happen.  Looked kind of odd, but I didn't care.  Noticeably limping, so i'm sure it was self-explanatory to people that may have questioned my choice of wardrobe.  But something positive come out of this for the evening.  I'm not a dancer, I don't enjoy it.  I'm a people watcher, and others don't seem to get that.  Wherever we go, people are always trying to get me on the dance floor, thinking that i'm not enjoying myself.  But it's quite the opposite... I enjoy watching others out there.  Well, last night, no one asked me or told me to get my butt up there.... it was GREAT! 

I can't sit around and feel sorry for myself for long.  Had the house to myself, i was so tired, and had already fallen asleep on the couch for 20 minutes earlier.  I could have slept all afternoon... but i got up, got my gym bag ready, and drove to the gym.  It's been a long time since I've been there... running and biking have obviously been my workouts of choice, and while i was still doing weight training on my non-running days, I'd use whatever equipment i had in the house, during lunch or before work or bootcamp.  doing the machine workout was a nice change, so i'm happy i made the choice to go rather than be lazy and nap.  Now that the Olympics are over, I should be go back to my normal routine, and go to sleep earlier than 12:30am!!!   Apparently I wasn't the only one!!! Found this article tonight, had to laugh. So for now, I'll stick to weight training, and hopefully i'll be able to work in some cardio soon, like some light biking on my trainer, so I don't lose too much.  

**edited**

hope you all had a great weekend :)