Scenes From a Run - Tulip Edition

Rebuilding mileage after an injury, especially an injury you haven't really recovered from, sucks. Tulips help. I forgot how much I love running through Washington Park after work. I need to bring this back.

The city announced a press release that (basically) said, if you want to see the tulips, go see the tulips, STAT. The early summer we had this spring means the tulips won't really be sticking around for Tulip Fest, bummer. A sunny and perfect April day before a rainy weekend sounded like a great time to go. 

2.5 miles later and a few tulip breaks, here ya go!

Injured Reserve: Add Me to the List

Injuries suck, especially when you are in the running groove. Most of this was written a few  weeks ago but I'm finally getting around to posting it. It helps that I'm over the worst of my 'no-running allowed' blues. For real though, I wasn't any fun to be around when I got that news.


But since I suck at blogging let's recap how my injuries (yes plural) came to be. Well there were some of these: Freihofer's Run for Women, Father's Day 5K, Warrior Dash, and a few others that didn't get blogged about.

Old vs. New. Heel strike much?

More specifically before I even began running this spring I did something to my hip on an elliptical machine. I saw my Doctor and we did X-rays (pointless since I knew I didn’t break my hip), steroids, NSAIDs, muscle relaxers and physical therapy. I took my drugs, went to physical therapy, I start running. No one can tell me exactly what the problem was; narrowed down to either bursitis or IT band issues. Months of physical therapy, naproxen and running and eventually things started to feel better. That lasted a few weeks and then it came back in a mild sort of way. For the most part I ignored it and kept running. 


I built up my mileage and my pace. Hit a PR during almost every race I ran. 5K training was in the books and decided to tackle a 10K. I trained and hit those miles faster than I thought and ran the inaugural Fall Frun 10K in November. It was epic and I felt so good. I hit a 5K PR by a minute on the second 5K. Highest of Runner’s High.

As shown, picture stolen from Greg. Sorry Greg. 

The next day I woke up to some soreness in my foot and it didn't go away. I took most of the week off from running with no improvement. I bought new shoes which also didn't help. Here we go again. Saw my Doctor, got x-rays, yadda yadda. I also decided to see a Sports Medicine Doctor for both my hip and foot pain. Basically, he agreed that my bursitis was back in the hip (greater trochanteric bursitis) and had some tenonitis in my foot (peroneal tendonitis). Joy. And he advised me to back off from running and the bootcamp class I've been taking and to go back to Physical Therapy. 


So that's where I'm at. I had some awesome races planned but now I'm mostly couch bound. I'm bummed but hopefully I'll be back pounding the pavement soon. I'll keep ya posted!