A Perfect Downfall

I'm a perfectionist by nature. I want to be perfect in everything I do, and so I tend to overdo things. And true to form, I approach running the same way. I ran and increased my mileage...and then I overdid it. When I look back, I did everything wrong: I ran too many hills and ran on too many banked roads, increased mileage too fast and too soon, and ran too many days of the week with no cross-training or strength training.

Now I'm injured. My right knee aches and so does my achilles tendon. Of course it's always the right leg. At first I tried to crosstrain by swimming, but that seemed to aggravate the injury rather than help it. My bicycle seems to be calling out to me from the garage for cross training, but that never worked out well before because it only aggravated my achilles, so I'm wondering why I have this particular urge. Over the years, I've learned to pay attention to my urges because they lead to some nice things. So, I got a new bike seat that's softer and may be more easy to adapt to.

So, I've retreated to my couch and computer, surfing the net and trying to find the cure, wondering when this is going to go away. I feel so stupid. And restless. And worried. I'm planning to take two weeks off. Then I want to get on my half-marathon training plan and I'm fervently hoping that I can get through this without injury. I blame it on the stupidity for running that last long run...but I'm hoping I'll reach that distance once again, and this time I'll be able to run strong. I hope that I'll be able to learn how to train sensibly.

The good news is that while my running is languishing, my CAE studying is pickiing up!

Running Through Summer

Now summer's here and the weather is really beginning to get hot. I added another run to my mid-week repetoire so that I'm running about 3 miles x 3 days a week. However, I can seldom have a "perfect week." Sometimes life just gets in the way of running and I wind up skipping a workout. If I do workout, then one run is usually very easy, with many walk breaks. I'm also back to increasing my long runs on the weekend. Last week I did 7 miles, and this week I did 8 miles--a record for me!!!!! My running schedule happened to coincide with my church's Run/Walk for Tanzania, which gave me some friendly people to run with at the park where I typically run. It was a real treat to run with other people. I went 4 laps around the lake. There are two duck families and it's been fun to watch the baby ducks grow up week by week as I jog around the park. It takes me about 1.5 hours to run 7-8 miles, and my husband got me a fuel belt, which I'm sure will come in handy.

I've been wanting to get back to my CAE studying and really put some serious time into this effort. But life keeps happeing. There's a board committee project that was more time-consuming than anticipated. The need to prep for an IEP meeting. My advocate quitting. Getting behind at work. A difficult author. Traveling for the holidays. Kids sports and tutor. It seem like I have less and less time for everything. I used to take classes at my local community college in preparation for a master's degree. Now, I can't figure out how I did it all. Maybe it was because I slept less. I remember during one summer class, I was more tired and fell asleep at every boring meeting and at church on Sunday. Maybe it was sheer determination. Where did the time and motivation go? The only fortuitious thing was that I planned out a study guide that called for spending 3 weeks on each area of focus. After all the distraction, I'm still on schedule. I haven't taken notes on all the chapters, as I wanted, but perhaps I can read everything once over before fall. Maybe I can put the piece into place again as I run through summer and the warm weeks fly by.