Oh, hello

I took a hiatus from running. I long hiatus.

The hip/groin problem I described in my last post prevented me from competing at the PSAC championships. It was so ironic... It has been so long since I qualified for a PSAC championship by time because of injuries; it had been so long since I felt like I was actually a successful racer. Finally I am racing well again, I am excited because I qualified, and I end up not competing anyway.

Jim was convinced that it was the shoes I was wearing. I believe a few posts back I wrote about the Asic shoes I was in love with and literally put the spring back in my step again. Jim was convinced that my hip problem was stemming from those shoe since there is no motion control in them. Whether he is right or wrong about that I have no idea. I know that my biomechanics are not the best, but this winter when I trained with those shoes I felt phenomenal... a million times better than I had in the past two years - no exaggeration. Still, I let him take me to the shoe store and pick out my next pairs of shoes. I got a pair of Nikes - the pegasis - and a pair of something else. I don't remember what the second pair was because I wore them two or three times then ditched them. They had way too much control. The Nike's however worked out alright. They break down much quicker than I think that Jim realized, and I feel they let me move a bit more freely.

At this time, I also told Jim that I am no longer wearing the orthotix, and that I haven't been since the end of cross country, and that I have felt great since I've ditched them. He took it better than I thought. In fact, he was very understanding.

So I tried training on the Nike's once my hip pain calmed down. I still didn't feel totally confident that these were the shoes for me. I felt semi-zapped when I wore them. I got to race once at the beginning of the outdoor season in North Carolina, and that went alright considering I had only just started running again. Right after that, I found out that I had mono, and my season was over.

Thus concludes my first three years as a collegiate runner.

By the end of the semester, I began to run again. I jumped too quickly into it though, I think. I felt really good after the mono symptoms subsided, except when I ran. I was DEAD. I was trying to run 28 to 40 minutes at a time almost immediately, which was a big mistake. Once I was home for summer, I decided to start focusing on consistency rather than the length of my runs. That was the key. That first week, I ran no more than 3 miles at a time, but I ran everyday. In fact, I ran 8 days in a row, which was probably not smart.

Yesterday I ran the longest run that I've done in a while, and I felt like a runner again. I did 6 miles in Bloomsburg, finishing on a gradual uphill for the last 1.5-2 miles. I got that throw-uppy feeling in my stomach. I felt bad, but a good bad. Not a "I am just getting over mono" bad or a "I'm wearing the wrong shoes" bad. It was a "this is my longest run in a while and I'm feeling it but I'll make it" bad. It was great. No stopwatch, just me and the pavement.

Maybe this last year, the stars will align for me.

JesVic happened last Saturday. It was phenomenal. For those of you who don't know (who ARE you? Does anybody read this?), JesVic is a 5K race that my friend Suzie and I started up last year to honor two women of our community who died from cancer. This year we attracted 362 runners and walkers! Check out the site here:
http://myweb.bloomu.edu/smhoffma/index.htm