Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The State of Mollie: Running Edition


It’s fall so here we go – the quarter-annual update on my running.

I don’t blog specifically about my running too too often; mostly because though running is great and I love it, I’m not 100% sure how much the interwebs need/care to know the daily ins and outs of my training (or lack therof).  But every now and then you won’t mind if we take a venture down the rabbit-hole of my life, right? Ok!

As I think everyone by now knows, it was an ungodly hot summer, which meant a lot of very sweaty morning runs. Luckily I have two running friends to motivate me out of bed on a regular basis!

Since moving to Eastern Market in May, I’ve tried to incorporate more cross-training (mostly biking and climbing, and a bit of pooling too) into my workout routine. This is because I am a wee bit injury-prone (or, more accurately, I am prone to getting over-excited about running -- a lot! super-fast! every day! and then ignore pain until it’s incapacitating), and trying to get better about not being injured.  And though I have had a few small problems this summer, they’ve all been minor and not particularly long-term, so go me!

I puttered along with an unstructured mix of running through June and July – basically doing whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it. Then I spontaneously ran a 1 mile time trial race on June 25, which went shockingly well, so I decided to return to CAR track workouts.

The workout thing may or may not have been a mistake. My IT band tightened up hard and caused a bit of knee pain mid-August (which I totally handled with strength/stretching exercises!).

Then an unexpected unpleasant surprise happened ALL OF A SUDDEN on August 20. Some call it perroneal tendonitis, I call it a pain in the foot, which I blame on walking too much in bad shoes (TOMS I’m looking at you). So I booted around for two weeks, only barely suppressing my rage at the injustice of it all, and taking out my aggression on the pool.


But this story has a good ending. The boot came off on September 1, my foot feels great, and I’ve been running ever since.

This is important because before all the shenanigans, I signed up for a lot of upcoming races. I’m doing the Ragnar Relay this Friday/Saturday, which means I’ll be running 18 miles over a 24-hour period. I am tentatively excited…I think.

I’m even more excited to be signed up for the Backyard Burn Trail Running Series – five 10-mile trail races from October 14-December 2. I love trail running, and I’ve never done a trail race (or a 10-mile race for that matter), so it should be an experience.

To conclude this State of Mollie: It is now fall, running and I are back in love, I haven’t done a workout yet but I might soon, and I’m racing this weekend!