Tamara Shazam!

It’s been one week since I started on my injury path and so much has happened.  I mean, seriously, look at what the Donald has gotten himself into now.  Billy Bush?  What were you thinking, dude?!  Then Brad and Ang coming to a custody agreement so fast?  Amazeballs.  And the Kardashian jewel thief caper.  Oh my goodness.  My point?  I’ve been a good little non-runner and the American political system, paired with a healthy dose of reality and a-list celebrity drama have kept me busy and engaged with the important things in the world.  Oh.  And past seasons of Survivor.  

I do feel pleased at my recovery progress so far.  Today was the first day that felt like the cramping let up late this morning and into afternoon and my end of day felt pretty normal.  Until today, every day has been filled with excruciating pain, up and down my leg for most of the day.  It’s relentless, like birthing labor, and it moves in waves, like contractions, too.   Remember that sweet, blissful painfree moment in between labor pains?  I did that allllll last week.  Hours of pain, moment of sweet painlessness, back to it again.   I was scared of going back to work because I could imagine being hit with a nasty charley horse in the middle of a math lesson.  Kids being kids would still be asking me if they could use the restroom and would still be tattling as they are usually oblivious to the suffering of an adult, and there I would be, poor attitude and grouching at them through my teeth, gritted in pain!  I’m not worried about hurting at work as much as I’m worried about about my pain threshold and the resulting shortest or temper that comes, and the resulting damage to the relationships I have with my second graders.  But today there was hardly any pain.  I kept on my pain meds and even felt so good that I attempted to run a little across the courtyard, without thinking, until I remembered that I’m injured and shouldn’t.  That has to be a good sign, right?

I’m glad to be feeling better.  I was a bit depressed last week, even if I did spend most of it at home with ice packs, heating pads, husband massages and more episodes of survivor than should be viewed in one week…. It’s sounds stupid, but I’m terrified losing my stride and gaining weight back. I can forgive a 10-20 pound gain, but more than that is untenable. I guess what is scaring me the most is taking three months off. Three months is pretty much what it takes to get into condition. I imagine that after three months without running that I’m essentially going to be a non-runner again. I’ll be out of shape. Chubby. Burning lungs. The works. Ugh. Today was the first day where I finally felt better enough to seriously consider what I’m going to do to make this work. I read about a few other runners who were sidelined for a few months and they focused on their upper bodies during their recovery period.  One gal said her running partner and she had the same injury at the same time, they took time off, and her partner took the opportunity to lift and get strong up top.  The girl who just recovered had some major regrets when they came back together.  I’m always talking about working on my arms but I have a hard time getting any kind of routine going.  I think this may finally be my time.  So my plan is to have a plan by the end of this week.  I’ll be looking into what upper body cardio can look like as well as some arms and core routines.  Yahoo!


On Sunday night I woke up with pain in my hip.  Pain acute enough that I ended up on the bathroom floor, twice, with that cold, clammy, sweaty, nauseous feeling.  Where you feel like you might pass out but you don’t actually?  Yeah.  That kind of pain.  I woke up the next morning, though, feeling frisky enough.  My hip still hurt, but nothing to worry about, right?  I went to work that day and my hip spasmed a few times, but I thought, again, this was no biggie.  That night it happened again- except worse and a few more times.  The next night the same, until this morning I was having Bradley help dress me as I literally cried.  I decided to bite the bullet, slough off the denial, call in a sub for the afternoon and go to the doctors.  I came home with a prescription for muscle relaxers and no running for about three months.  I can walk, I can be mildly active, but I can’t do anything strenuous, involving my hip.  I have what’s called sciatica, I guess, and it’s a compressed nerve and resulting spasming something or other…  clearly I was paying close attention, but I feel like I’m having a constant charley horse that radiates out from the ball of my hip, up and down my leg.  I’m walking with a limp and everything.  My training has been solid enough that my doctor couldn’t pinpoint a reason for the injury.  It seems to have come out of nowhere- it’s not even the hip that usually hurts at all.  She did say I’m lucky it starts in my hip rather than my back, and that points to a speedier recovery than the other version.   But anyway…

[ Cap’n Awesome will return!]

I kept wondering if I should do my half marathon on Sunday and obviously that’s definitely not happening.  Bradley said that perhaps this is Mother Nature telling me to slow down for a season.  There’s a part of me that feels relieved.  I can let up the pressure and recover through the holidays.  What a gift, right?  I can guiltlessly avoid running for months.  But holy cow if that doesn’t terrify me.  Running is how I keep from gaining weight.  Running is how I prove my dedication to myself.  It’s like proving to myself, the limits I will go to, to stay healthy and alive.  Letting it go is sort of like letting my fat girl back in and I really don’t want to let that happen.  So I’m approaching this with caution, for sure, and an open mind for how I can continue to move forward with my health, but I’m totally freaking out.

So.  Half marathon season is almost over and I couldn’t be happier.  My friend, Jessica, and I were discussing the Snohomish River Run and how much the timing really seems to be a challenge.  If it were in September, no problem.  End of October?  Not a problem either.  The beginning of October, though, makes for challenging training.  The end of August has the burst of end of summer panic with it, and for me, the onset of the school year.  I run like a robot all summer long, then the school year hits and it’s like I have to relearn how to have a healthy private life and a job at the same time.  Harder than it looks, I guess.  My point being, my training hours dry up and are replaced with snuggling hours, crafty hours, recovering from work hours, prepping food and clothes for the week hours…  you get the idea.  I spend nine hours outside my home and tha makes running tricky.  Not to mention the sheer exhaustion that comes with starting out a school year.  And if they are ‘extra fancy’ students, well, I may not get a run in until Winter Break!  

So, yeah, having a half marathon next weekend has me all kinds of agitated so I decided to go for a long run today.  Like Jessica told me yesterday- she got the three miles in at the 5K.  She just wanted to run ten miles today and she’d feel like she met her goal of running a half marathon this week.  My mind clicked into gear, agreed and decided to do the same thing…  And then I woke up this morning and didn’t feel like running around here.  I like running different routes right now, I guess.  I think I feel confident enough as a runner now that I want variety in my runs.   I just knew my neighborhood’s view wasn’t going to satisfy me today.  Today I needed something new.  I needed to go to the dollar store, so I decided to combine my run with my errand for Google eyes and glue sticks.  I told Bradley that I’d text him when I got to Wayne Golf Course and then he should hop in the car to meet me at the store with his wallet and a sweatshirt for me.  By the time I got to Wayne, I had only gone about four miles.  I knew I wanted at least six miles, if not more, so I took a detour around the Bothell Landing loop and then went on the Burke the rest of the way to the dollar store. 

 It may sound silly, but I felt like an adventurer.  I’m also always amazed at how fresh the world looks when you’re not in a car,  I saw apartment complexes and housing developments that we whizz past and I saw a gorgeous section of the Burke Gilman that we’ve always managed to skip.  If I had run the rest of the way home, I would have made about nine miles.  That’s something good to keep in mind for the future.  For today, though it was shorter than I wanted it to be, I feel satisfied with today’s run.  Do I feel ready for the half marathon next weekend?  Not really, but I don’t feel unready either.  This will be the anniversary of my first half marathon and my fourth half marathon this year.  I feel experienced enough, this time, to know that it doesn’t take as long as it feels and I’ll come out the other side alright.  Moxie and confidence will have to carry me through.  And then, yes, I’ll be ‘there,’ at the end of my half marathon season.  I’m proud of myself, but I’ll be glad when running returns to being about meditation and fat loss rather than training for the half…  Until next summer.  

Today I went for my first after-school run of the year.  I’ve done hikes, walks and kind-of jogs around the playground after school, but nothing that had me feeling like I went for a run.  It was short, but still.  It’s a good sign.  My world is starting to make more sense to me as I’m developing a better understanding of my students and the unique year we are going to share.  Being able to run tonight meant that I’m better at shedding the mantle of my day and resuming my home life without having a violent clash when the two collide when I walk in the door.  It felt so good to not fear it.  All month I’ve known I should run, but every-day-all-day I dread the thought of putting on my running capris.  Not today.  Today I saw the sun as I left my building and knew that I had to run through it.  I hardly passed the threshold to my house when I was changed and back out the door.  No one wanted to run with me so there was an unusual sense of freedom tonight.  I could listen to my music as loud as I wanted and I could run as fast or slow as I wanted and it just felt good.  Yeah, me! 
It definitely felt like autumn, though, with that thick, dense, fragrant, moist, lung-burning, throat-thrashing thickness.  Worth it, but man.  

I started wearing my Iron Horse Half Marathon shirt around the neighborhood on runs of late.  It’s rare that I get a run shirt I like, and I am way in love with this one- bright color, good fit, tech fabric and it actually says ‘half marathon’ on it.  That’s kinda cool.  Lately I’ve been wearing a few of my better run shirts out (I have three I like: Iron Horse, 2017 Beat the Blerch & Snohomish River Run), I watch people read them and I wonder what they think as they process the shirt and me wearing it…  

I’ve been thinking of joining a Diet Bet lately.  Skinny Meg is hosting this one, starting on 10/4, which happened to roll across my Instagram and it’s just been gnawing at me.  I really want to lose 30 pounds.  I absolutely would love to use my recent seven-pound loss as motive to continue on to lose more and, lately, my determination for food control has been in the outhouse.  I work out like a bandit and eat like one too.  I haven’t done a diet bet in ages and have some funds built up in my account, but I’m really wondering if now is the right moment.  But then I remember that some of my most stressful school years have been some of my best workout and weightloss years.  I think that my classroom can seem a little crazy to me some years and my health is one place where I can rule with utter control.  That may make me sound like a psycho, but the alternative is to eat to medicate the crazy away, and I’m not doing that (my class is still a unique, vocal, curious and spirited group totaling 29 2nd graders, this year).   So, yeah, I think I’m going to do it.  At the very least I’ll get some good habits started and make smart choices through my birthday and Halloween.  And at the most, I could be eight pounds lighter, come November 1st!  🙂


I was so surprised when I got an email last week letting me know that the Beat the Blerch sign ups were already in the works!  I had barely wrung out my socks and let my sneakers dry and already I had to commit to do it again!  Aiyiyi!  But you know I did.  I bit the bullet and paid a hundred something dollars for the privilege of sweating amongst others.  So, next year, once again, I’ll be chasing that Blerch for 13.1 miles through the Snoqualmie Valley woods with a belly full of cake, purple drink and oatmeal!  

And if you’re wondering, yes there really was a tent filled with kittens that you could cuddle with after the race.  I’m not kidding.

(These were the official race pics- my phone died on mile three of this race.  Lovely.)

My Sunday was this: running, crafting, cooking, snuggling, shopping, hand-holding, and not much else.  🙂

My ponytail, however, really got into it.  Talk about a glory hound.  

This week was intense.  I put off thinking about my job until the last minute and I ended up in kind of a stupor as I stepped back into my teacher shoes.  I remember almost nothing from the first day of meetings.  I didn’t even realize they installed this giant new monitor and resituated the entire library until I returned five days later and noticed- I spent a whole day in there prior to that and realized nothing.  My friend Christina mentioned I looked a little out of it.  Apparently she was more correct than anyone knew!  

{Jude asked me to put on the ‘rappiest Macklemore song’ on the way to school the other day, which turned out to be ‘Thriftshop’.  Emphatic lip-syncing ensued.}

Steps on Soapbox: On the first day of school, with about fifteen minutes until I needed to meet the students, I found out that I had 31 kids on my roster.  It’s been whittled down to a reasonable 29 students at this point.  Yes, that was sarcasm, if you were wondering.  I’m left questioning the way education is valued by our government and public with the lack of funding.  The voters approve mandates and then the legislature marginalizes the necessity, paints the teachers to look like greedy, money hounds and we all turn a blind eye to the fact that the voters said grades k-2 should have class sizes less than 20…  And I have 29, now.  It’s just nuts.  With the increase in numbers there’s also a mathematic reality that the number of kids who have special needs also increases per class, putting a greater load on the teacher and whole community.  Seven year olds shouldn’t have to compromise like this.  Steps off of soapbox.

By the way- it’s going ok.  There’s a lot of management happening and my ability to teach is definitely challenged, but we should be able to make it another 177 days with continued smiles and learning.  I’ll have earned my summer next year, though!

I’ve been taking it easy on the exercise front of late.  When I came back from Disneyland my hips hurt from standing in line a lot.  Then I ran a 5k on that Saturday followed by a half marathon the next day and ridiculously sore hips the day after that.  And the next.  And all the way through this past week.  I was getting pretty nervous about the Beat the Berch half marathon next weekend until Bradley and I went out and played on trail and tossed the frisbee around a little this afternoon.  We did the 3.6 mile St. Edward loop today at a pretty decent pace and my hip never started hurting!  A lot of my anxiety washed away after that.  While I am planning to continue to take it easy this week on mileage, and I may end up walking a little bit, I think I should be able to make the miles on at the race on Saturday.

I planned to make a return to running on Thursday but it was a bit wetter out than I generally like.  Friday was a deluge the whole day long, and I’m not exaggerating.  It was ridiculously rainy.  Like, the kind of rain you see in movies that have the actors soaked through to their skins within moments- that kind of rain.  It makes me shiver just thinking about being out in it.  It was a bit sobering, realizing that my very near future may very well have a whole lot of those kinds of days.  Seattle.  That’s one of the reasons I love living so close to St. Edward Park.  The tree canopy is thick enough that even in some pretty intense rain you can find refuge, usually a fine mist and big drips make their way to us, but not much more.  After this long, dry summer, however, today, the morning after the deluge of yesterday, the park looked washed fresh.  We were some of the first of the day and there weren’t many footprints treading their way through the trails just yet.  We could see the patterns of rivulets that made their ways to the lake en masse, sweeping the summer’s dust and detritus with it.  There weren’t many puddles, at all, as the thirsty earth seemed to absorb the rainfall.  The birds were singing, chipmunks chirping, deer wandering- it was a gorgeous little trail run today.