Spring Recap and Knee Rehab

I haven’t posted in awhile so here’s a rundown of how Spring events went and what’s going on now.
After Lake McMurtry, we went back to Stillwater on April 16 for “Remember the 10,” an event to honor those that went down in the plane crash of 2001 where 10 members of the OSU family were tragically killed. This was the 5th year for the event and it is well supported. There is a 1 mile fun run, a 5K and a 10k. The route goes around the OSU campus, is mostly flat with a couple of hills. This is an event that I will probably repeat, the proceeds benefit the OSU Counseling Center and the bling is nice too. Most of all, the event is a sweet celebration of those lives and a means to support others who would benefit from the services of the counseling center. Since I am working on my masters in counseling, this is an area dear to my heart. After any event, we have to go eat and we decided to detour to Pawnee to go to Click’s Steakhouse. If you’ve been there, you know how good it is, if not, try it sometime. http://www.clickssteakhouse.com/

The next event was the Princess Warrior Trail Run at Keystone State Park, April 25. I was super excited about this event because I trained with Chrissy Whitten for our first marathon in 2007 and I wanted to support she and Michael as they celebrated the life of their little girl, Lillian Grace, who fought for her life for 103 days. Since we had lost a baby after only 18.5 hours, due to Trisomy 13, I had walked a few steps in their moccasins. The weather that day had been awful, rain was threatening, but it held off for most of the races. There was a 1.03 mile and a 10.3 mile. We did the 10.3, which was 5 miles through trails at Keystone and 5.3 miles on the road. I loved this event! The food was great, there was a costume contest, the t-shirts were awesome and nice bling. I will definitely do this one again. The only drawback is that it is on a week night, so that it falls on Lillian Grace’s birthday, but after a day at work, it’s hard for me to get there on time and I’m not fresh when I get there.

Next, we were doing a relay for the OKC Memorial Marathon on May 1. We had run the marathon before and we knew that wind could be a factor but we weren’t concerned at all because we were doing only a relay, so what could go wrong? If you ran OKC, you know the havoc the weather created for all of us that day. The race start was delayed by ½ hour and it had about every element of bad weather that you could think of. Three of us were going to run the first three legs together and two of us were going to run the last two together. We planned on meeting at 12th & Broadway and finishing together. When the first three finished their relay legs, they about froze going back to the hotel and when I called them as we got close to Broadway, one of them said, “we c-c-c-can’t meet you at the finish l-l-l-line, we're about frozen to the bone!” During our last leg, we even got hailed on. I commend all those who finished the ½ and full marathon, especially the first timers. Those were definitely the worst conditions I ever raced in, but this is another event that I love so much! I’m sooo glad we did only the relay!

I was planning on running the Aquarium half but I had been running so tired and slow that I didn’t want to turn in a poor time. I understand they’ve changed the route now so it goes into Jenks more and out on the Creek and that would be a great improvement. I ran it in 2008 and 2009 and even though it was flat, hot and boring, I always had personal best times there.

I also planned on doing the El Schorcho 25K on July 16, but they filled up so I am going as a cheerleader.

This brings me to the weekend of Memorial Day. On Saturday we thought we would do 10 miles and then 18 on Monday. I was thinking, “why should I run 18, I don’t have a marathon until fall?’ But I didn’t want to miss the “fun” of a long run and lots of girl chatter! Well, about mile 8 I said, I’m exhausted, I need to turn back and I felt fine about going back by myself. But we were almost to our halfway point and ready to turn back so we headed to the Adams Mark (we started @ Turkey Mountain), had a little break and headed back to Riverside. By the time we got to the 10th mile, I said, “I’m going to walk/run.” Then we got to 14 miles and I needed to walk. It was my right knee and it hadn’t been bothering me prior to this but every now and then, I would get a little hitch in it and it would go away right away. We finished our run and headed out for coffee. In hindsight, I should have iced my knee while we had coffee, when we got up to leave, my knee really hurt and I figured that I needed to give it a couple of days of rest and ice and I’d be back to running. My knee remained the same until Thursday of that week, when I had to go down a flight of stairs and then I went down another short set of steps but I was in so much pain by that point that I slipped a little and used my right knee to stabilize myself. So…now I was really in trouble and that brings me to today. It’s my meniscus and it appears that I’ll be walking for awhile. It’s a classic overuse and overtraining injury, I’ve been running so tired the past year. So, I am finally taking a break and will be walking until my knee doesn’t hurt when I run. Remind me of this please because I have tried to run two times and my knee has swollen up again. I’m having a hard time keeping myself from running, it is truly addictive! I am registered for two marathons in the fall, Marine Corps and R66, I have a good base and I keep telling myself that I don’t need to panic, I’ll be fine for the fall, I’ll be fine for the fall, I’ll be fine for the fall.