Friday, May 20, 2011

It's almost that time again.

Marathon training time, that is.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me first report that I ran 6 miles yesterday and 3 (extremely slow) ones today.  I'm feeling pretty good except the right side of my abdomen, literally the side of my trunk, begins to hurt after about a mile or so.  It's around the surgical incision there.  The naval one doesn't hurt anymore, but it seems like the other one is much more deep and diffuse--it's not just at the site, but about an inch area all around it.  It's annoying, but not bad.  NO left-sided pain, NO shoulder pain, and I felt just a tad of the right-sided pain early on, but it went away...and it was never sharp.  I assume that will continue to fade away.

Tomorrow is Run with the Foxes day...which I'm sadly not running.  I REALLY want to, but I know that when Dr. W says something is a bad idea--it must be.  He knows me and pretty much lets me do whatever I can...but when he says don't run, I do have to listen.  He's only told me that twice before--when I had severe plantar fasciitis and then again with my obturator groin strain.  I did not listen about the PF--and I ruptured my plantar fascia.  I listened about the groin until another doctor told me to try running on it--I did, and was set back weeks more.  So, regarding running injuries, I listen to him.  Not that I'm injured, of course.  I've been injured.  To me, injured=can't run and, often, can't walk without a limp.  This is just a little niggle, a tweak, and it's almost gone.  But fine, I won't run Run with the Foxes.  I mean I could run it and not race it...but, yeah, that probably wouldn't play out.

One more thing to talk about before I get to the content that goes along with the title.  Some updates on my professional life.  First, dissertation continues to go well, and I don't have that many more interviews to do.  The real work is in analyzing them.  And I'm slow at it.  But wow, is it interesting.  Second, I'm interviewing for a full-time faculty position at IU (as an assistant professor) in June.  It's hard to believe that I'm finally almost done with school and will have ONLY a job instead of a job and school.  Thirdly, I've been invited to speak at the Iowa Advanced Practice Institute.  It's not actually in Iowa--it's in Indy.  The advanced practice model was created in Iowa, and they travel around and hold a 2-day institute for advanced practice nurses.  They're coming to IU Health (formerly Clarian).  I have been asked to lead the discussion regarding the evaluation and appraisal of quantitative and qualitative research.  I'm very excited.

Okay, okay, enough about me.  Marathon training is about to make its return!  That didn't take long, did it?  Marathon training takes a long time--about 5 months.  It takes about a month to fully recover from a marathon, so you can only really run (meaning race) two marathons in a year.  People usually run one in the spring and one in the fall.  I prefer fall marathon training because it means that the bulk of my training is in the summer.  While I don't particularly like the heat, I HATE running in the bitter cold.  My muscles never loosen up and all the clothes make it hard.

My fall marathon is the Chicago marathon on October 9.  It's one of the biggest marathons in the country.  I've never run it.  I was registered for it in 2009 and got hurt and had to DNS.  I went to the race to spectate (Tim ran), and it's unbelievable in terms of crowd support.  A very different experience than something like Eugene, I'm sure.

Next week, I'll do one final recovery week, and after that...it's go time!

No comments:

Post a Comment