Hey, Gingah! Where've ya been???
Well, for those of you who have been going through Run-Gingah-Run withdrawal (symptoms include re-reading old blog posts, repeatedly and futilely pressing the F5 key to refresh your screen, and craving Ben & Jerry's—any flavor), let me assure you that I have not abandoned you.
I've been running (most recently, the UAlbany Homecoming 5k and the Power House Athletics inaugural 5k Challenge to benefit Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG Foundation) and still have a few more races on my schedule for this year.
It's been a pretty rough few weeks, as personal emotional crap rudely invaded my training routine. (I respect my readers far too much to go into those pathetic details. I'd just as soon discuss my bowel movements. Hmmm...I sense a theme!)
After the UAlbany Homecoming 5k (which I had to run/walk), I had a really solid (albeit slow) 4-mile training run the following Monday. Then I took a tumble doing something as literally pedestrian as walking the dogs (damn curbs), banging up one of my knees a bit (lovely bruise) and leading later on to some significant hip pain. When I ran the Komen 5k a couple of weeks ago, I ran practically the whole race with my hips aching; I figured it was a result of a particularly intensive leg press session the day before the race. <FACEPALM> But this hip pain continued through the week, even after a visit to my chiropractor (which helped to some extent, but not entirely) and frequent applications of BioFreeze. If you own stock in companies that make industrial-size store-brand acetaminophen and ibuprofen, you should have a nice dividend coming your way at the end of the quarter. I was popping those puppies like Tic-Tacs.
The pain grew gradually worse through the week, keeping me from doing any workouts. The fact that my job involves sitting on my tuches all day (I'll leave it to my Yiddish-speaking friends to correct my spelling of "tuches") only seemed to exacerbate the problem. I also ran the board for a local staged reading of "Trying" by Joanna McClelland Glass, and the chair in the tech booth certainly didn't help my hip problem. During sections of the performance without cues, I did my best to stretch my legs and hips to alleviate the pain. Meanwhile, I was still popping NSAIDs like there's no tomorrow. As I began to experience pain running down my right leg, I began to wonder if I had developed sciatica. Of course, I always try to remind myself of the medical school admonition: "Sometimes what appears to be a zebra is just a horse."
So yesterday morning, I headed up to Saratoga Spa State Park for the Power House Athletics 5k Challenge. Since my hip problem had kept me from training, I hoped, at best, to run the full distance, preferably pain-free. I ran slowly, and, of 79 entrants, I finished 77th (which I considered appropriate, since my bib number was 1177). I took some pride in discovering that the two people who finished behind me are both younger than I am. But what made me proudest was that I ran the full distance. What surprised me most was that I did not have any hip pain during my run. Astounding! (Later that afternoon, after the endorphins wore off and just before I headed to the theatre for the final performance of "Trying," the hip pain returned with a vengeance, so I was singing "Hello, Ibu!" again.)
The impending end of this year's road races is something I see as both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it will give me an opportunity to focus more on rest and gradually rebuilding my base and (God willing) getting my weight down, which I'm certain is the primary factor in my health woes (as well as factoring, no doubt, into some of the aforementioned emotional crap); a curse because I will miss the nearly weekly supportive boost that I only seem to get from racing.
My next race, #17 for those of you keeping track, is the Race Away Stigma 5k this Saturday in Troy. Again, my goal is to run the full distance and to run pain-free. I've decided that improving my time is just the icing on the cake. (Did someone say caaaaaaake???) And that'll be it until the Christopher Dailey Foundation Turkey Trot in Saratoga Springs on Thanksgiving, after which I'll conclude my 2010 road racing year with the City of Albany's Last Run 5k in mid-December.
In the meantime, I'll see about getting my hip checked out at some point (my primary care physician is also an orthopedist who is board certified in Sports Medicine--one of the reasons I selected her; I just hadn't taken into consideration the fact that she would be out on maternity leave), focus my efforts on rebuilding and reinforcing a well-rounded fitness base, training my very willful 6-month-old Chihuahua-mix (which is the one thing most likely to kill me), and getting involved more in the local theatre scene.
I just want to take a moment to say THANK YOU to everyone who has given me genuine support in my running efforts; to my theatre friends (both old and new) for reminding me why I love the performing arts; and to Chris Ciceri and the Albany Devils for honoring me with the opportunity to sing "God Bless America" at the Devils' season opener as the New Jersey Devils' AHL team finally returned to Albany for the first time in several years. (Thank God I remembered all the words, didn't miss any notes and didn't fall over the railing!) Although I preferred the previous team name (Albany River Rats), it's so good to see professional hockey return to the Times Union Center (which I still keep accidentally calling the Knick...which it was, what, two or three iterations ago?). River Rats or Devils, hockey in Albany, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "by any other name would be as suh-WEEET!"
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