From Saturday's PR to Sunday's DNF

Quite an eventful weekend for the CilleyGirl. 

Saturday I ran the Earth Day Advantage 5K, and I PRd!!  An official race recap is here.  My take on the race was that it was a good course.  There was one hill right at the two mile marker, which sucked the life out of a lot of runners but not me!  Except for walking through the aid station, I ran the whole damn thing.  My legs felt great throughout and I think I even picked up the pace towards the end.  Official time:  0:37:08, for an average pace of 11:57 per mile.  That was what I was hoping for as the race progressed, to have my time be under twelve minutes per mile.  That put me 16/26 in my age group (which may be the best I've ever done -- so far!) and 124/188 for all women.  Being Earth Day and all, they had veggies burgers afterwards (not too bad, needed some cheese IMHO as they were a little dry given the burger to bun ratio), organic beer (I passed, too early in the morning for me to drink solo), plus lots of other healthy giveaways. 

Unfortunately, the apparent trade off for a PR was yet another headache threatening to develop into a migraine.  I stuffed myself full of advil and headed off to the bellydance showcase.  It was great to see several of my former classmates and my instructor dance.  I hadn't realized how much I'd missed dancing, and they were all asking when I'd be back.  So I think a return to dance may be in my future.  I took some pics but with the stage lighting they didn't seem to turn out very well.  I'll see if any of them are decent enough to post.

I also went red this weekend as I planned.  Picture on that to come too.

Sunday I woke up sans headache but with familiar twinges in my back and legs.  I didn't want to go do another race but off I went, with grand ideas of how well I was going to do at this 10K.  Where I had to drop out at the 2K marker because out went the back and the hip yet again.  Tough to run when you feel like one leg will not hold your weight.  Of course, since I am slow anyways, I realized that soon the pack leaders would be heading back to finish.  I ended up chatting with the race volunteers on the way back so that I could stay out of the runners' way; I even pinned my bib on backwards (so it was just white) so that there was no chance they'd log me in as finishing.  My first DNF.  Ah well, it just wasn't worth trying to run through it so close to Eugene.  So a trip to the chiro is in my near future.

In case anyone (like me) is wondering if I'm just a whiny wuss, here's what is happening.  My low back pops out of place and sticks to the right.  It's like cocking your hip slightly to the side and then keeping it there.  At the same time, my pelvis becomes like a Rubik's Cube, with the left half of my pelvis torquing forward, which stretches that quad muscle oddly as my leg swings back and forth (i.e., when I'm walking), while the right half of my pelvis rotates backward and makes my right leg noticeably shorter.  This presses on a nerve in my right leg, making it feel like my leg will collapse when I put weight on it.  I naturally tend towards being swaybacked because of years of back problems which gets worse as I get tired, so that too pulls oddly on both quad muscles.  I also have this nifty impression of John Wayne going on. 

I can alleviate a lot of the issues from this when I'm just walking around if I keep my abs pulled in tightly.  I'm thinking this means I should have done any more ab work during training.  Guess what I will be working on after the marathon?  Unfortunately, it doesn't really work when I'm running, there is too much pressure on the nerve. 

This is what happens when you take a chubby, out of shape moose of a CilleyGirl and put the idea in her head to go do a marathon.  Hindsight and all that. 

But I am not discouraged!  Chiro will torque it all back in place, and I will be very well rested -- as I was for Saturday's PR -- for Sunday's marathon.  I bought nice, healthy food to eat this week, and I plan to eat it:  chicken caesar salad wraps for a couple of days, chicken tetrazzini, and then chicken and mashed potatoes.  I love that a marathon gives me an excuse to indulge in my mashed potato fetish.  (Nice visual I gave you there, yeah?)  I LOVE mashed potatoes with gravy.  We usually mash up about five pounds of potatoes for Thanksgiving.  For three of us. 

Well, I am off to a birthday celebration lunch.  Happy Monday! 

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl