Very Brave

30 Apr

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

Every now and then you come across a person, or in this case a story about a person, that just stops you in your tracks and leaves you with so much emotion that you don’t know what hit you.

This news piece on a deaf, blind man about to walk the Flying Pig 5k did just that. Deaf since birth and blind for many years, David Conroy likes to pursue lots of interests.

“The thing about being deaf and blind is you get really bored,” stated a LADD employee in the video.

That statement hit me like a rock. I cannot fathom losing either my hearing or my sight, but to lose both? That’s incomprehensible to me. I’ve sat here for a while trying to even grasp what that would be like, and can’t. And yet, it’s David’s life. And he chooses to live with the sort of courage that I only read of.

I want to walk away from this learning from David. I want to stop being such a spoiled brat who takes my health everything for granted. I want to appreciate more. I want to remember David when I set out to run the Flying Pig Marathon Sunday morning.  I want to look at this world with fresh eyes. I want to possess just a small piece of his incredible perseverance.

And most importantly, I want to be brave.

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Dance Marathon

29 Apr

Saturday morning I ran ten miles. According to my right IT band, that was about four miles too many.

I woke up at the awful hour of 4:30 AM, tossed on my running clothes and headed to the kitchen for a quick pre-run breakfast. Due to a lack of planning, here’s what I ended up with:

The Real Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast pretty much went like this: one bite of banana followed with a lick of peanut butter from a spoon and repeat. I learned this nasty (yet delicious) habit from my gluten-sensitive boyfriend, who gave up bread late last year. The fortune cookie was not a part of my breakfast, rather it was remnants of my pre-run dinner, chicken lo mein.

Our group was extra small this week (there were only three of us). We took off on a 10-mile loop.

Less than five miles into the run, I started to feel that familiar IT band nagging me. Around mile six I tightened the straps on my knee (I had two IT straps on one leg). That surprisingly relieved the pain for a mile or two. I managed to make it the entire 10 miles, but not without wondering how in the world I could do another 16.2 miles like that.

Here are the stats from our run:

  • Distance: 10 miles
  • Time: 02:10:13
  • Avg Pace: 13:01/mile

I’m going to stick to strength training and yoga for taper this week and rest my leg. I’m also going to ice my leg three times a day, and foam roll my legs and hips twice a day. In fact, I’m icing as I type. My leg is mighty chilly.

Healing feels like a full-time job sometimes. Let’s hope this does the trick, or I may have to reconsider switching to the half marathon, which I really don’t want to do.

Last week a friend sent me a link to the video below. Not long afterwards, I tried to dance walk across 17-92 on our way to get coffee. However, I stopped when my co-workers shunned me. I’m now considering dance walking (or running) all 26.2 miles of the Flying Pig Marathon.

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A Letter to My IT Band

29 Apr

Dear IT Band,

I ask you to please quit playing games with my heart. One day (Thursday) we’re all buddy buddy and I think we’re getting along just fine and we might just have a beautiful friendship after all and then two days later (Saturday) you’re being a bitch again.

I prefer the good ol’ days when we used to run the streets in glee. When together we would conquer our mileage, one step at a time. The days when we would skip off into the sunset laughing. Where did those days go? How do we go back to that?

I hope that we can work out whatever it is that is causing this tension between us. I miss us.

Best Regards,

Hemarie

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IT Band Update

27 Apr

Yesterday I slept in and skipped my regularly scheduled run with the group. Instead, I woke up late, threw on some running clothes and my new shoes, grabbed my borrowed Garmin, saw the battery was dead, put it back down, grabbed my iPod shuffle and was out the door for a quick run on my own.

I ran 3-ish miles in less than 35 minutes. And guess what? I felt no pain in IT band. Granted it was a short run, but it was sans the intervals I’ve become accustomed to and at a quicker pace. Afterwards I did some squats while I waiting for my breakfast smoothie to blend.

Let’s see how it fares during tomorrow’s run, my last long-ish run before Flying Pig Marathon.

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Comfort Zone

27 Apr

If you know me well, you may be surprised by the following statement: meeting new people is terrifying to me.

I’ve been this way since I was a wee little one. I can’t really explain why it makes me so anxious, but I can explain why I force myself through the process anyways: because I love people. I love learning from people and I love laughing with people and if I didn’t bypass this little fear of mine I would never get the joys of meeting some pretty amazing people.

Now this would be shocking to friends and family because they never see this fear. What they do see is a loud, chatty girl always telling stories and laughing with the group. I would credit this to my ten years of hospitality work. Every day I had to go to work and force myself to walk up to a table with a big smile on my face and talk to strangers. And when I moved into tending bar, I had to work on the art of small talk, as well as entertaining large groups. While talking to complete strangers did get easier through the years, my jitters are still there. And I still have to overcome them.

While stepping out of my comfort zone is almost never easy, it’s always worth it in the end.

I almost quit Marathonfest ten times before I even started for fear of meeting my running group. Now those women (and our one token guy) are such a great support system and I spend countless hours laughing with them every week. I’m even traveling to Cincinnati with some of them next week for my second marathon, Flying Pig Marathon.

I was scared to death of trying yoga for the first time, until Carolina from Peas in a Blog let me tag along with her to a class. Now I’ve got a new addiction.

And most recently (last night to be exact) I walked into a room full of strangers, (well… some of which I know only through their blogs that I follow) and I met a group of lady bloggers here in the Orlando area. Now, I’m not as brave as I appear… I dragged my BFF Rox there with me so she could  protect me can pick the brains of seasoned bloggers, which I’m happy to say she was able to do so (on both counts). I got to meet some lovely ladies, learn some new things and laugh a lot.

I look forward to the next meet-up. Thanks to the ladies for being so nice to the noobs!

So the moral of this bloggy blog: if I never stepped outside of my comfort zone, I would miss out on so many opportunities. I will continue to tuck my clammy hands into my pockets, put a smile on my face and start simple with “Hi, I’m Hemarie…”

When was the last time you stepped outside of your comfort zone?

Shut Down

25 Apr

I spent all day checking my email, my credit card account and the ING New York City Marathon registration page to see if I would be training through a hot, sweltering summer for the ING New York City Marathon this year.

Sadly, I finally got this message:

Shut down for the 2012 New York City Marathon

Well darn. This is like the time I didn’t make the cheerleading squad, without the awful cartwheels.

Since the Flying Pig Marathon is but  days away (11 to be exact), I’m going to wait to decide on my next race until then, but I see lots of half marathons in my future. These poor legs of mine need a rest.

Have you ever put your name in for the New York City Marathon lottery and if so, did you get selected?

On a side note, the marathon lottery tweets that said “May the odds be ever in your favor” had me chuckling today.

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Running and Squats and Stretches… Oh My!

24 Apr

After some thought, and talking it out with the people around me (or them coaxing it out of me), I think there are two major things that could be contributing to my IT band problems in my left leg:

  • Need new shoes
  • Lack of strength training

Recently I did get new shoes, but since my current NB Minimus shoes were still feeling good, I decided to wait until after the marathon to switch over to the new pair. I’m not sure that I have any good reasoning beyond that… as I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I was afraid that since the new pair was a slightly different style (the new ones are the trail version while my old ones are the road version) I could injure myself switching so close to Flying Pig. And when I say the old pair were still feeling good, what I mean is that it usually takes me a while to realize that the pain I’m suffering from might just mean it’s time for new shoes. Here I was worried about hurting myself with the new shoes when I’m hurting with the current shoes!

So this morning I tossed on the new shoes:

I also wore long tights and a long sleeved shirt… and gloves. Yes, gloves. That’s right… my body no longer remembers living in New York and I’m officially a Florida girl that wears long sleeves and gloves when the weather drops to this (in April in Florida nonetheless):

The run went well. There were only three of us this morning and we ran four miles at an easy pace. While I felt the familiar twinge of my IT band in my right leg, it wasn’t so bad that I was in pain or limping for that matter.

Here are the stats for this AM’s run:

  • Distance: 4.06 miles
  • Time: 50:21.45
  • Avg Pace: 12:24/mile

Afterwards I came home and addressed problem #2: lack of strength training. I think I dropped my minimalist strength training plan that was working so well when I started up with yoga, thinking that was working the same muscles in a similar fashion and could just substitute yoga in. I think I was wrong, and need to be doing both, so back to squats, lunges, planks and push-ups I went! I tossed in some one-legged squats for good measure and finished up with some serious stretching of these hips of mine.

By the way, did you know you could download the Maxwell squeal on Geico’s website? Oh yeah. I totally just downloaded it.

Off I go to get my Tuesday on. Only 12 more days until the Flying Pig Marathon! Wee wee weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

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Acorn!

22 Apr

This video cracked me up. I now run in New Balance Minimus shoes, but back in the day when I ran in my Nike Free+ shoes I would often get acorns stuck in my shoes. Each time I thought to myself “Well, at least I have shoes on.”

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Gettin’ My Run/Yoga On

21 Apr

Sweatin’ pretty… I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Special thanks to this lovely summer-time Florida weather and a big shout out to yoga.

Yesterday I woke up just before the sun rose to set up for yoga in our Florida room. It was dark, and perfect for getting focused.

Don’t worry, the sun rose in time for all the good stuff.

I was feeling great and super focused… until the wonderful aroma of brewing coffee wafted towards me. After that, all I could think about was getting my hands on a cup of joe. Mental note: Ask my boo to hold off on the coffee brewing until I’m done.

This morning I woke up late, so breakfast was just a banana and some peanut butter. I walked outside and was happy to see that it hadn’t started to rain like my weather app was forecasting. In fact, it never did rain. But the day has looked pretty ominous, like we’re on the verge of a storm.

My first run back started off well. It was muggy, but a good breeze kept us from being too hot.

Around mile seven I felt that good ol’ familiar IT band twinge in my right knee, so decided to run back to the car before running became painful. One of my group leaders, Sue, was out riding her bike as support so she rode it in with me.

Sue was riding her bike because she’s running a 12-hour ultra tonight. You gotta love her. To me, she has the perfect combination of wit, smartass, intelligence and crazy. Yes… crazy. You have to be crazy to want to run 12 hours through the night. Occasionally I have crazy moments where I tell Sue I’ll run an ultra with her one day. One day I hope that crazy sticks long enough for me to actually do it.

After the run we had some breakfast then me and fellow runner Erica headed off to meet up with Carolina from Peas in a Blog, who invited me to a donation-only yoga class being offered on Rollins campus by the Rollins Yoga Club. They were raising money for Water Project, a non-profit organization that builds wells and provides clean water to under-privileged villages. Full Circle Yoga instructor Rob Hefele led the outdoor class.

I loved yoga on the grass. It was perfect with Earth Day being tomorrow.

Nature's Yoga Studio

Yoga outdoors

Rob moved us through a series of positions and moves that kept my muscles guessing and stretching. The flow was faster than I’m generally used to, but loved it! And every time we would love over our shoulder to the “back of the class” this is what we saw:

Rollins Campus

Beautiful!

Technically, for the first half of the class we saw the Rollins lacrosse team pulling weights and doing sprints and such, but they eventually cleared the field for a more peaceful experience.

Note to self – when doing yoga outside please remember the following:

  • A towel to lay yoga mat on so that it doesn’t get too wet if the grass is dewy.
  • Don’t take shoes off until you are stepped fully on the mat. Otherwise you will have to wipe your feet off with your dirty socks because you forgot a towel too.

After winning a spa raffle (what??? I never win anything) and a jaunt down Park Ave. back to our cars, I was ready for a shower. Freshly clean and belly full, I’ve spent the last several hours icing and compressing my poor leg.

On my next run, I’m going to run with my new NB Minimus shoes. What if all of this is just a sign that I should’ve already done the switch, rather than waiting until after Flying Pig Marathon? Eek!

In Sue’s words, “Won’t you feel stupid if you went through all this pain and you just needed new shoes?” Why yes, Sue, yes I would. Let’s hope that’s the problem and I’m back to running strong in no time. 🙂

Do you have any special plans for Earth Day tomorrow?

It crept up on me again this year and it’s going to be rainy all day. I’m blank on ideas.

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Testing the Waters

18 Apr

Okay, so I know that I said that I wasn’t going to do any running this week in efforts of healing my IT band, but I couldn’t stop myself from taking the ol’ legs out for a test spin Monday night.

I was riding my yoga high when Donnie came home from work and said that he was going to run one mile. Yes, that’s correct. ONE mile. He is currently coming back from an almost-stress fracture in his foot and is starting on his long road back to recovery … one quarter of a mile at a time.

Wanting to be the ever supportive girlfriend and feeling good from my yoga, I volunteered to go with him. I brought along our pug, Tank to make sure we didn’t go further than that. Pugs aren’t exactly runners, but this one is always looking to run some laps in.

We didn’t run far, and my legs were feeling tip top. However, I’m going to stick to my plan and do yoga instead of my run tomorrow just to make sure. And it looked like we wore Tank out. He was napping soon after we returned.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and did another yoga class from YogaVibes.com in the Yoga for Runners series. This time I took the class appropriately named Yoga for Runners. Like the day before, I set up shop in the Florida room and it was perfect. Our Florida room has two of the four walls covered with windows so you almost feel like you’re outside. And as I was doing my breathing, the sun was rising and the birds were chirping. It was amazing.

I went to work feeling completely relaxed. At one point we had a meeting where my boss brought up something that normally gets me stirred up. But yesterday I just sat and smiled and said “I did yoga this morning. You’re not going to get me riled up today. ” Ha!

How’s your week going so far?

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