Love Thyself

Friday night Camo-Man went out on a date night/assistant Easter Bunny run. We finished our shopping quickly and decided to get a small appetizer before heading to see "The Lincoln Lawyer" starring the hot Matthew McConaughey. 


While seated at our table, Camo-Man and I did some people watching. The band was setting up. People were laughing, chatting, visiting with one another when I suddenly felt very much in the minority. Not because I was the only woman. Not because my skin was a different color or I was the only Christian in the room. However, I was definitely a minority.


I was one of the only people in the room who didn't need to lose 100 or more pounds. 


Do I have weight to lose? YES. 

What I don't understand is how people let their health spiral out of control! How do people continue to eat fried food, processed food, food loaded with additives and not notice how it affects their health??? You can't tell me these people are happy. 


I'm not trying to be judgmental. I'm just confused by a society which says being overweight and/or obese is OK. Since when does convenience become more important than our health? The risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. 


IS IT WORTH IT? 


No. It's not. Love yourself enough to stop the madness and take control of your life and health. Please. Love yourself enough to make yourself a priority. Which is more convenient? Fast food or health issues which brings you to the hospital in your golden years.

Vomit Them Up!

I was listening to a Jillian Michael podcast recently (Save Money Big Time) where she suggested journaling to an emotional eater who needed to learn how to deal with sadness, stress, anxiety or anger.

“When something comes up, you don’t think let me run to the fridge to stuff this down with you know a piece of cheesecake…..instead of stuffing them down you vomit them up onto the page – literally.”

Yah yah yah I’ve heard it before, but you know what? I don’t do it. I don’t write it down. Instead I continue to let that 3 pm carbohydrate call come rapping on my door and I open the door – WIDE! At about 3 pm every day, I feel anxiety, stress, tension as the day is coming to an end and I don’t feel like I have everything from the day under control. Work is not done. Replacement staff members come in at that time.  Housework is not done. Kids are coming home from school. All of it comes to a head about 3 pm every day.

So how am I going to handle this time? Ideally, I’d like to close my office door and do the 10 minutes of meditation and relaxation at that time to gather my wits and feel the control come back into my life. Realistically? I don’t think so. My office has a huge window and everyone coming into the fitness center would seem me sitting in my chair doing my meditation. Yah, I don’t think so.

Anyone have a plan B? 

A Day in Therapy

Yep, I spent the day in therapy today, physical therapy that is. After an all clear on my x-ray, I went in for an MRI on my right hip. Wow. My first MRI was quite an experience. I watched a DVD on Ireland which was not really all that interesting, but it kept my mind distracted from moving around inside the huge capsule. Naturally, I was very anxious to hear what they had to say. 


Nothing. 
Absolutely nothing showed on the MRI.
Except...some ovarian cysts which I need to have looked at. 
BEAUTIFUL!
I wasn't really looking for a reason to see ANOTHER doctor. Ins addition, they referred me to the physical therapy department to see if they could identify anything with my stride. YaY! I was so excited to have someone watch my body mechanics. 


I met Doug, the physical therapist. He asked me about my pain, which seemed rather lame. Not Doug, but my description of the pain. Does it hurt here? No. Does it hurt now? No. What about this? Uh-huh. Lame I tell you. I felt guilty that I didn't respond with a rapid YES and sweat pouring over my brow, but I knew my body is talking to me and I knew it was time to listen. 


He had me lie back on the table and moved around my left kneecap. It floated around rather nicely. He moved my right kneecap. OK, so maybe he TRIED to move my right kneecap. It wasn't exactly cooperating.  After going through numerous push and pull exercises on my legs and ankles, he had me lay down on the table while he stood down by my feet pulling them up toward his chest, jiggling them around as if they were a long rope you were trying to untwist. He had me look at my shoes while still remaining supine. 


Hmmm, my right leg looked 1.5 inches shorter than my left. He had me sit up. Interestingly enough, my right leg extended and looked 1.5 inches LONGER than my left. Lie back - short. Sit up - long. 


Before we go any further, let's state the obvious. The human body is fascinating! Did I ever tell you that I considered going to school for physical therapy, but chickened out after volunteering at a hospital and discovering I didn't like old people? And (true story here) did I tell you I considered a career in genealogy in the mid-1990s? And what would I do then but talk to the old people that I now loved and revered? I am quite the contradiction.


Anywho - back to the story. When do I feel pain? 

• When I run: It can be quite sharp, but mainly it surprises me when it jolts me out of my runner's high
• For a few days after my run: Not sharp, but I can feel the muscle which I didn't previously even know existed.
• When I push off my right food to stand
• When I do lunges - That's when I feel it over my knee cap. 
• At the beginning of Body Flow when my muscles are not warmed and we are doing shifting weight from side to side. 

Doug prescribed ultrasound for my knee, hip and ilium crest. Ha! I knew what that term was when he mentioned it! He also gave me some lateral movement exercises as well as some simple step up exercises. Some of them I can even do in the kitchen while making dinner!

I go back on the 21st. We'll see if I'm reporting any progress by then. At that time, Doug said he might ask me to run on the treadmill or outside so he can watch my stride closely. Of course, I'm hoping that with these exercises I will become less and less aware of these strange leg muscles and they will blend back into the background with the rest of my aging body and just let me get out on the road and run. 

Ilium Crest

Ladies and gentleman,

I would like to introduce you to your Ilium Crest. What, you may ask, is your Ilium Crest? It is the very tip top of your hip bone, the bone which rises above your pelvis and is closest to your ribs.

Last fall when I was preparing for the Wine & Dine Half Marathon at Walt Disney World, I had a slight ache in my hip. Only this pain was directly over my hip joint. I didn't hurt. It was an ache and when I stretched that muscle, it felt great. I had such relief. 

In the back of my mind, I thought it was a little bit of IT Band Syndrome. So I decided to rest it and stop running for the winter. I focused on swimming and biking and it's felt great all winter. I even told my husband that my hip had stopped popping when I rotated my toe inward. 


Last week I started running again. Nice and easy, nothing crazy. I figured my cardio had been good all winter, but I wanted to graduate back into running because I've read numerous stories of people hitting it hard and getting injured. So last week I did some walk/runs with Camo-Man and felt pretty good. Saturday I did Body Pump and jumped on the treadmill for a couple of miles to flush out the lactic acid. I felt great!


Sunday I swam 600 yards. I taught Body Flow and then I wanted to run a 5k without stopping on the treadmill. I walked for 5 minutes to warm up and then set the treadmill to an incline of 1 and speed of 5.6. Nothing strenuous. After a mile, I moved up to 5.8 and after 2 miles, up to 6.0. A 10 minute mile pace. A pace I've run at easily in the past. 


At 2.7 miles, I felt a pinch at the top of my Ilium Crest. I thought it was strange, but it was a simple pinch. I kept pushing through it. At 2.8 miles, I felt the pain move around to the front of my hip bone. That freaked me out. I knew it was time to walk. I walked for a while until I hit 3 miles. I tried to run the final tenth of a mile and while I was able to finish it, it was definitely an uncomfortable feeling. Of course, the worst diagnoses started going through my mind. 


I visited my dear friend and doctor, Dr. Volkan Sumer, on Monday. A x-ray revealed nothing more than some arthritis in my hip (whooopee - got that to look forward to) but the arthritis is not causing the pain I am dealing with right now. 


So this morning I am scheduled for a MRI. I am pretty anxious to find out what is going on and what it means for my 2011 Race Schedule and my lofty goals. 

4 Tips to Run the Stress Off | Active.com

4 Tips to Run the Stress Off | Active.com

I ran across this article after returning from my run with Camo-Man tonight. We did a simple loop around town. The article seemed appropriate since I spent a good portion of the day in tears for way too many reasons. Run is complete and I feel much better!

Back to our Regularly Scheduled Program

Sunshine & Cocoa

PLEASE
Can we re-start 2011 over? So far, excuse me while I am EXTREMELY blunt, 2011 has sucked!


Not only did my small town lose two high school seniors, on Feb. 9th, we had to put our 14 year old chocolate lab down after she had a spinal stroke. Leber's Hot Cocoa was born on the 5th of December 1996 and went to doggie heaven on the 9th of February 2011. It was definitely a sad, sad day in our home. 

Camo Man, Hollywood & Princess
with Cocoa

Then on February 10th my hard drive crashed. Holy moly! Not just my personal hard drive...my work hard drive. And no I was not backing up. I was heading into the spring season, pool season, crazy season and I had just basically lost my "bible" from the last year. OH MY GOSH! I was going crazy. Could I have survived? Yes, but would I be re-creating every single thing from the last year? Heck yah and I had absolutely no interest in doing that. 

So I paid $450 to get my hard drive recovered (lesson learned). I am breathing a sigh of relief to have my data from the last year, but I've started using Carbonite to back up both of my work computers. 


We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Day 1 of Conference

Earlier in the week, I went through the conference program and found at least one workshop for each time slot for the conference. After talking to Steve, I decided to attend "Print that Pops" at 9 am and  "Disc Golf" at 2 pm.

My morning workshop was supposed to last two hours. After speaking for 25 minutes on topics which were much more applicable to large park districts with their own marketing departments, the presenter said he was done was speaking and asked if we had any questions.  Really? Now, I truly work for a small park district. My park district is about as small as they come, but if they are going to pay for me to attend conference I am going to get my money's worth.  I quickly glanced at the conference program to find another session starting at 9:30 am. Fortunately, the Q&A portion lasted for another hour and was actually much more interesting than the presentation itself. My afternoon session of "Disc Golf" was very interesting and informative and definitely something to think about for the future. 


Friday night is the night my friends go out with Angie's park district. SO I was on my own for the night. Following my disc golf session, I came back to the room debating what to do for the evening. Did I want to go to dinner alone? Could I catch a show? Instead I remained laying on my bed watching a movie. We had gone to 11 City Diner for lunch where I had a cheeseburger and some Junior's Cheesecake. So, I definitely didn't feel hungry. 


I still had a full stomach from consuming all of those calories in the last 24 hours. I finally decided about to go for a run down Michigan Avenue. I was a little concerned about stopping at every block due to the stop lights, but decided running outside was a much better option than running on the dreadmill. Of course, with all of my gadgets & gizmos, it took me about the usual 30 minutes to get properly dressed and ready for running outdoors.  Grrrrr.

At Water Tower Place

I walked out on Michigan Avenue and started off with a nice easy walk for about 2 blocks. Before the cold had a chance to creep in, it was time to take off on a relaxing jog. Luckily, I found the stop lights on Michigan Avenue were timed to my pace. So for the first 4 or 5 blocks, I didn't have to stop once! Unfortunately, that came to an end when I hit Monroe. I ran one block east and then turned north on Columbus. As I ran along on Columbus, I started to feel a little uneasy with my road choice. I was running on a much less populated street and couldn't wait to find my way back to Michigan Avenue. I finally found my way back with no incident - and only seeing one person not in a car - and he was on a bike! Brrrrr!  


I continued down Michigan Avenue feeling like I was on top of the world. It was like I was on a running tour, but also....I like doing the unusual. I kept thinking to myself: I like being weird. It's Friday night and instead of sauntering down Michigan Avenue doing some shopping, here I was running down Michigan Avenue not spending money and burning off some calories! Awesome!

Water Tower

Because I didn't have my Garmin watch, I had no idea how far I had run. When I reached Oak Street, I crossed Michigan Avenue and started heading back toward the Hilton. I stopped at Water Tower Place and took a couple of really nice photos - at least I think! I had to crack up when I had texts from Camo-Man and my WORRIER friend (who I swear was separated at birth from my husband) asking what I did for dinner that night. I responded saying that I hadn't eaten yet, but that I was out on a run on Michigan Avenue. Camo-Man immediately responded "BE SAFE". As soon as I got back to my hotel, I sent Camo-Man a text saying I was back at the hotel safe and sound. I forgot to text the WORRIER. 

Mediterranean Veggie Salad

I jumped in the shower as soon as I got back to my room to warm up and I ordered room service. I knew going out to dinner was going to mean 1,000 more calories so I opted for the Mediterranean Veggie Salad...and a glass of chardonnay. About 9 pm that night, The WORRIER sent me a text asking if I was back from my run. I responded with a resounding YES and she told me how I gave her heart palpitations worrying about me because I was crazy enough to go for a run on Michigan Avenue. I just didn't mention my brief detour on Columbus Avenue. I knew she'd worried enough tonight. 


While finishing my salad, Steve & Angie called to say they were done with dinner and asked if I wanted to come to Howling at the Moon, a very fun & entertaining piano bar....unfortunately, I was a little too comfortable in my sweat pants. Combined with my lack of sleep the night before and half a glass of chardonnay, No Thanks! I was perfectly content to let Chicago party without me. Instead I purchased a new book on my Nook and quickly fell asleep!