Calmed down

After going to the orthopedist, I got the good news that I don’t have a stress fracture big enough to show up on an x-ray. There could be some minor fractures or tissue damage but those only show up on MRIs and he thought it was best to save me the cost. Sigh of relief. He confirmed what my PT said which is medial tibial stress syndrome. The doctor told me it was ok for me to race but to realize I might have to do a run/walk method depending on the level of pain. The nice thing about seeing someone who specializes in sports medicine is they understand. As even he said, he gets injured guys who need to race well enough to quality for Boston or they lose another year, so my situation was nothing specials.

I left that appointment feeling more optimist than I had in a while. Normally when I get injured I get angry. This time there was no anger or even frustration. It was more sadness. More like defeat. I think this feeling was coming from another place though. This weekend marks a year when my family’s world was turned upside down with the diagnosis of my mom’s cancer. For the most part I’ve kept fairly strong emotionally about everything but every once in a while I break a bit. Recently was one of those times thinking about how it’s been a year since it started and reliving it in my mind. I walk around my property now and watch all the things my mom plants start to grow. I long for the phone calls from her asking what’s starting to pop up.

The sadness of my mom and my injury sort of collided in a way that made me break down for at least solid week. My poor husband had no idea how to help me when he would see me crying and saying I don’t know what’s wrong with me (mentally, not physically). But it's not something wrong with me, my whole family is experiencing the same sadness. After my appointment though, I was finally able to turn that around. It flipped that switch in me and I knew it was time to pick myself up, stop feeling sorry for myself and take care of business best I could. You can’t change the cards you’ve been dealt so you have to learn how to make the best of them. Being sad or angry or frustrated about my leg or even losing my mom doesn’t accomplish anything and the stress of it certainly doesn’t help. I can choose to stay in that dark place or I can choose to pull myself out.  

Since then my leg has started to get better. Slowly, but I can feel the improvements. I even managed to do a 3 mile run yesterday with minimal pain! Woohoo 3 miles! Aaaand that will be the longest I’ll run before my race. As my mom would say, it is what it is.

After I managed to calm down about everything I think it finally sunk in that I’m racing soon and better get my shit together. I realized I hadn’t tried on my tri kit since I got it. Sweet love handles… were those there before? Damn you ice cream and lava cakes! I haven’t used my wetsuit since May. After lots of help from my husband I was able to confirm it still feels a bit small and I feel like its compressing my chest so I can’t breathe. My arms also won’t lay flat against my side. It reminds me of the kid from Christmas Story. And yet I’m too cheap to buy a new one. Only time my aero helmet had been on my head was when I got it. After making some adjustments I’ve decided this is a totally awesome look. I’m sure my neighbors saw me walking around my house thinking what the…? Got a test drive of my gear today during a brick and I feel ready to go now.

Everything is slowly coming together and hopefully I’ll be ready to go soon so I don’t get last-minute-stress-syndrome. Right now I’m simply happy I seem to have my head together again. Now all I have to do is get my dessert tendencies under control. I had my husband melt the last of the ice cream (a sin!) and hide the chocolate chips and peanut butter from me so we should be good. Time to respect the taper!