Firefly race recap and tendinitis

So, those strained ligaments in my right foot that were bugging me? Turned out it's actually tendinitis or tendonitis depending on who you talk to you on the internets. Luckily I was smart enough to go to an actual Physical Therapist/Sports Doc who did all sorts of crazy things like move my foot and watch me run. I went for my first actual PT visit on Saturday, the day of the Firefly 5K. He hooked my foot up to some crazy machine so it could be all nice and tingly:

This is actually from today but the same thing happened.

Then he used an ultrasound (not diagnostic) to try to heal the area even more. The last thing he did was tape my foot up with KT tape and other tape and have me run in the parking lot. The pain was SO so bad. I would have kept running but I don't think I would have been able to keep it up for a 5K. So he retaped it and had me run again and it was AMAZING. To have so much pain and then to have none just because of repositioning some tape was truly just amazing.

This too is from today. The tape for the race was a bit more.  But you get the idea.

The race was an evening race and not knowing how the tape would hold up since he had to wrap it so early, I really tried to not put pressure on myself for a particular time goal. I wound up running 28:28, 2 seconds slower than the Dodge the Deer and 2 seconds faster than the Freihofer's. Which is... interesting. I won't lie, I am disappointed that I am still a minute slower than I was before I got pregnant. But, since I'm not lying, I will also freely admit that I am not doing the work. I'm not doing speedwork religiously like I had been. I'm not pushing myself right now. I am increasing mileage and having fun with my kids this summer. Once school starts again I think I'll buckle down (I don't know if that's a phrase, but I'm going to use it as such) and get back on the speedwork track and clean up my eating and get focused. But right now I want to enjoy as much as summer as I possibly can.

When I think logically and if I were listening to a friend talk... I first started running when Chewie was just turning a year old and it took me a good couple of years to get my 5K time to my PR (27:35). LightRunner just turned a year old, I barely ran when I was pregnant, I took it nice and easy when I started again. Instead of thinking that I'm still a minute away from my PR, I would tell my friend, look, you're ONLY a minute away and this is just your 3rd postpartum race! AND you have kidney stones and tendinitis. I'm not making excuses--like I said, I admit I'm not doing the work--but all things considered... I'm doing pretty well. When I look back at the Firefly 5K, I started really strong with no foot pain, I ran up hills instead of walked them, and I finished strong.

Official time: 28:28 Splits: 8:52/9:46/8:50 and 86/317 people.

(Although I did not PR, I was so excited to be there for Bridget who did PR, after running 5 miles in the morning too. She ran a super awesome race and I'm so very glad I could be there with her!)

For your amusement:

This is how I had to shower after today's run.
I put clear wrap around it and taped it.
It did not keep it dry. Sigh. But it wasn't soaked.

July stats and where has the summer gone?

It is August 1st. August. 1st.

I'm not sure how that happened. Which is pretty usual for the summer. We look forward to it all year long and then it gets here and it just goes SO quickly. I decided the other day that if NYS ever extends the school year into summer I will either home school or move. Probably move.

We've been both busy and not busy. Lots of library programs, playdates with new friends and old friends. We've also spent quite a bit of time in our little rinky dink pool. Now that the heat wave is over and nights are getting chilly, the pool is back to being cold and is not quite as much fun. During the heat wave that everyone complained about the pool was actually quite lovely. Lovely in water temperature sense, it was still rinky dink in every other sense. There's a hole I can't find in the ring at the top. The pool itself has just been stretched out from years of use so it's not actually 3 feet. But they have fun. I've decided--with my MIL--that we will get an above ground pool installed for next summer. Vader can either have input as to where it goes or he can not.

The first week of July the kids went to gymnastics camp. I spent $300 for the three of them to have 9 hours of fun. Every summer I think about camp but I don't want them to be away from me and they don't want to be. Gymnastics camp was just half a day for 3 days. It was good, but expensive. I looked into the town camp that I never want to do because it's pretty much a school day (9-2) and for the three of them for a month it'll cost $250. Next summer Chewie will be able to go since she'll be entering kindergarten (gasp). The cost maxes out at $250 for a family. So I think I will sign them up for that and just send them a couple of days a week. It will solve the problem of them wanting constant entertainment and not understanding that I still have to go food shopping and do laundry and dishes and things like that. I'll still have LightRunner but hopefully he'll be okay. Wouldn't it be funny though if he goes from being the best baby ever to the worst 2 year old?

We just celebrated his first birthday and it truly is bittersweet. He is just a joy. Happy and easy going and truly delightful. He is crawling up the stairs and standing on his own for brief snippets. He can cruise along furniture but hasn't attempted to walk and I am fine with that. He is 19 pounds 6 ounces and 28.5 inches long. He misses the jedi record by two ounces... the Princess was 19, 8 at a year. The other two were 16 pounds. He loves eating meat and vegetables. We started cow's milk and he has been just fine with it, which was a relief after all his gassiness and crankiness from dairy early on. I nurse him morning and night but it is clearly just for me. I feed him in the morning, and 15 minutes later give him a sippy cup of milk and he smiles and claps for it and drinks it all down. The bedtime feed is really just him humoring me. For 4-5 minutes. I wanted to make it until the end of the summer but I don't even know if we'll make it the end of the week! He is independent--he likes to feed himself and Mama doesn't quite fit into that.

I started my half marathon training and I have been pretty vigilant about sticking to my plan this time. No extra miles. I've strained the ligaments in my right foot and sometimes my left foot gets sore from compensating. After I do the Clove Run in a couple of weeks I might have to take some more time off. I don't want to, but I want to be able to do the half in October and if resting for a couple of weeks will make that better than I should probably do it.

I've also signed up for a Ragnar in May. 24 crazy women from my local town are sleeping in vans and running a total of 180 miles over a weekend. It is insane. I am pretty sure that this will be a once in a lifetime thing. I am looking forward to getting to know the local ladies better and to do something so insane, but I think I like the idea of a destination half a lot more. Run 13.1 miles, stay in a nice hotel.

Stats:

June

• Mileage: 28.4
• Runs: 6
• Races: 1

July

• Mileage: 56.1
• Runs: 12

I'm not even bothering to list cross training since it was nonexistent. Well, I've done a lot of bike riding, swimming, pushing strollers and shopping carts, furniture moving up and down stairs, and non-traditional exercise. I'm pretty sure July is my highest mileage month in quite a while. And I even took a whole week off to go to the foot doctor and deal with my foot and its tender ligaments. 

I'm starting August off with a nice easy evening run with a friend and a 5K race this Saturday. It's an evening race with glow sticks and laser shows and all sorts of fun. I'm not even thinking about goals. I just want to run and not pee my pants during the race, pee blood after the race, or want to chop my feet off. There, those are my goals. 

Coincidence

How's this for coincidence? Last year I bought Vader a Mini iPod for the hell of it. I only bought the mini because that's what I could afford. The other night he asked if there was a way to make it bigger. Tee-hee. Like software that would expand it. You know what I did. I bought him an 80G Classic. It came yesterday and SkyWalker and I drooled over it because we just have a 30G. I've noticed some odd behavior from my iPod lately. Today the date/time was wrong and I watched the full battery drain in a minute or 2. Yup, I need a new battery. If I was mean I'd keep the 80G and give Vader my 30G and let him get a battery. But I'm not mean. I'm going to get a battery and kit to do it myself and if I kill the iPod ... I have a birthday coming up.

We went to the foot doctor again on Tuesday. The X-ray came back normal. He suspects that I'm holding my foot wrong when I walk so instead of the ace bandage I was wearing they made a new one that will give more support to the bottom of my foot. And he wants to see me again in 3 weeks. Good times.

The Princess is not only crawling up the stairs, she is now going down. She crawls up while holding on to the pipe-railing we have (a series of pipes between the upper banister and the bottom so that tiny heads cannot get squeezed into it and also so little hands can reach a railing), and then she climbs down a few steps, and then climbs back up a few and then back down a few so that every trip takes twice as long. If I pick her up there is much drama. She's getting good practice going down the stairs though. She's not doing the butt-thing that most kids do. It's hilarious. She won't walk by herself but give her something to climb and she's all over it. I have a feeling in the fall she will be the one doing gymnastics when big brother is in preschool.

I've contemplated taking them both to swimming classes at the Y. I think SkyWalker would benefit from it and I KNOW the Princess would love it. The only thing stopping me is that I would have to pay the sign up fee again since I quit years ago, I would have to pay the monthly fee AND the swim fee. At least I think that's what it is. Maybe I should check first. If all I'm doing is swim classes maybe I don't have to pay the monthly charge. That's a lot of money when you add it all up.... and while I think the Princess will be fine because I'll be with her, what if SkyWalker decides he doesn't want to do it after all? That would be all too familiar... I wonder if we can try it out first.

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I am a mystery

But we all knew that right?

The jedi and I went to the foot doctor yesterday. He could not replicate the pain there (no surprise. I can't either. It just happens). So I had an x-ray done and will go back in 2 weeks and hopefully the x-ray will give us a clue as to what is wrong with my foot. I am at the point that I can deal with being in pain. Most of being a mom is being in a pain in one way or another, but I don't want to find out 2 years from now that I've been walking around with something really wrong and then I have to get my foot replaced with a robotic one. Actually, that would be cool.

We also went to the state park 5 minutes from my house yesterday for a picnic lunch. They are now on summer hours so it cost us $6 to park! I had planned weekly picnics for my meetup, but I canceled half of them. That's a lot to expect people to pay every week, especially with gas being so high. We still have our weekly lunches at the town park (that draws more people anyway).

We picked up my dress from the tailor today. After I paid I noticed a safety pin at the bottom. I said, "What's the safety pin for?" She looked at it. Looked at her paperwork and then started making one excuse after the other.... she forgot to hem the dress! I could have worked with a loose top, but the floor length dress needed to be knee-length!! We went to the library and wasted an hour while she hemmed it and then picked it. She did not get a tip.

Either Bagel is going to love me or The Nice Librarian is going to hate me. It's a good thing there are 5 weeks in July because I need 3 of them off. We're getting the floors refinished the first week so the kids and I will have to stay on LI. The next week my sister is getting married. And then the last week Shinesalot is coming for a visit and staying at my house. I'm just part-time. It doesn't cost anything to have someone else work for me. I still just feel guilty though. I have to remember all the times the part-timers didn't work when I was full-time.

I just had the loveliest conversation with a friend I usually only talk to online. She actually stayed here way past her leaving time. It reminded me how nice it is to talk to a friend (albeit at work) without interruptions. Well, there were interruptions but they were easily resolved and not of the "I need to poop" or "I want to watch Dora" nature.

I've been working on a potty training bookmark for the new parenting section. I'm prettifying it now. Who would have thought a couple of years ago that I would be doing this? I was THE teen librarian for quite a while. It's so funny how things change.

I had more but I lost it. I need a snacky-snack.

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