March 29th thru April 2nd, 2011 – 12.28 Miles Total

The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”

I am reporting three activities today. My last few runs have not been great and I'm thinking it may be because I didn’t allow myself to recover after my last race. I was told once by a running buddy that you should recover one day for every mile you ran in your race. So if you run a 5k, you should rest for 3 days afterward.

But that’s ridiculous, right? Who needs to rest after a 3-mile sprint? That’s just a regular workout right? You just happen to have a number on your chest, right? Well, apparently not.

Every runner I’ve spoken to seems to agree that you make silly mistakes on race day that you would never do during training.

While I may be at a point in my fitness where a 5k race wouldn’t phase me, silly race day mistakes and all, my last race was a 10k and whether I wanted to admit it or not, it took a lot out of me.

March 29th, 2011 – 6.42 Mile Run: This was a nice run. Perhaps a rookie mistake to get out there and run almost 6.5 miles so soon after the race. It felt good at the time, though. Somewhere around mile 5, I got this sting in my knee, but I was almost done so powering through it was no problem

March 31st. 2011 – 2.16 Mile Run: I knew that I should not have done this run and under normal circumstances, I would have rested BUT Jordan got suspended from school!!! Suspended! I didn’t even know how to respond to this!

I was a good kid. I never ditched a class. Never drank. Never smoked. Never did drugs. Never partied. My cheerleading skirt was the longest on the squad. I didn’t buy a bikini until after I was married! I didn’t even get my driver’s license until I was 24! I waited a very respectable amount of time after I was married to have children so there was absolutely no doubt that I got married because I was in love and not because I had to. I did everything in the proper order (except the driver’s license thing): High School, then college, then marriage, then career, then house, then children… And this pastor’s kid *certainly* never got suspended from school!!!

I was elected to stay with Jordan for the morning while he was supposed to be at school. In the afternoon, I could drop him off at the BGC and go to work, but for now, I had this 8-year-old school law breaker on my hands and I had to effectively communicate to him that getting suspended was not to be tolerated in our home.

So after 2 hours of scrubbing, swabbing, wiping, dusting, vacuuming and pooper scooping, I ran him for 2 miles until he dropped to his knees and wept openly. I ran him non-stop, but you can tell by my pace that I didn’t run him as hard as I could have. There were several stops where I had to do the drill sergeant thing and yell in his face to keep him sufficiently terrified, but he ran his little heart out.

I couldn’t show it, but by the end of this run, my knee and ATs were really giving me grief. So I decided I would rest for 3 straight days.

But that didn’t work out…..

April 2nd, 2011 – 3.70 Mile Run: Even though Jordan was still grounded and banned from everything that had a screen in our house, he was still allowed to ride his new bike. He came to me while I was folding some very unimaginative laundry and asked me if I wanted to run while he rode his bike.

I knew I shouldn’t have. Both ATs were killing me every time I stood up or walked but I really wanted to go for a run. I know these mild days are soon going give ‘way to scorching temperatures and I didn’t want to waste a good running opportunity. Especially since my boy was asking me.

So I decided I would take it easy and just go for as long as he wanted to.

Well, he was ready to quit after 1 mile! What?! It took me longer to change my clothes! I wasn’t about to stop after 1 mile. Running still feels like torture at the 1 mile mark. It doesn’t start to feel good until at least 1.5, right?!

So I ran him to our neighborhood, told him to ride the rest of the way home and called the hubby and told him to expect the boy in a few minutes but that I was going to get in some hill work.

Hill work?! Are you kidding me?!!! Why doesn’t someone who loves me ever say, “You’re insane!!! Your body is telling you that it needs rest! Do the usual distance if you have to, but for Pete’s sake, take a flat course!!!”

Well, no one said that. I only ran the hill for about a half mile then ran back down. But that was enough. By the time I reached my driveway, I was limping.

Needless to say, I will be taking today off and probably tomorrow. My knee is popping and my ATs are so sore and tight, I was honestly worried about myself. I think a couple days of rest ought to have me back on my feet again and in fine form.


Random Thought: Isn’t it funny that being separated by race at a packet pick-up / Health Expo is totally OK with us? Any other time, we would protest.