Ideal Body Weight

I will open this by saying that I’ve been told I was overweight or obese my entire life. My whole life, all the way back to junior high. My mom had me in Weight Watchers and special exercise programs and therapy programs for fat kids as a teenager. I learned all the height and weight […]

I Am Not an Athlete

I have no idea how this comes across to various people I know.  Maybe it’s obvious, maybe not.  But I am definitely not an athlete. I know I have tried pretty hard over the past years.  I tried pretty hard sometimes as a kid, too.  I learned figure skating.  I took gymnastics for a couple […]

First 5K Completed!

I ran my first 5K today! First 5K ever, not even just the first race, the most I’ve done in training so far is 4.16K. The first mile, I was wondering what the hell I was thinking, with adrenaline taking my breath away. The second mile, I watched all the men disappear ahead of us, nothing but women left in my sight. The last mile was around the Capitol building. We ran up Michigan Avenue, and then we could see the finish line when we turned to make the Capitol loop. So that loop was thinking, “But, we were just there!!” The last song that came up on my MP3 as I ran to the finish line was Hooked on Classics “Dance of the Furies”, which made me think of my dad. I finished in 38:51, 14th in my class (women 35-39) and 171 overall.

I asked my dad after if he ever thought I’d run a 5K. His response: “You can do anything you set your mind to.” Totally didn’t answer the question, Dad! Just once I’d like to know I exceeded his expectations and blew him away. Just once. I don’t know what that’s going to take.

Next up: Michigan Brewing Company’s 5K Beer Run on June 19th. Between now and then, I’ll be ramping up my weekly mileage, aiming to pass 25K/week by the end of June.

On other foot type things, last year for six months I had this horrible pain at the base of my second toe on my left foot. It started in June and just kept getting worse and worse. I ignored it for months, and finally got it x-rayed in October. When I looked at the x-ray, it looked like there was a stress fracture there at the base of that second toe (radiologist saw it, too), but that’s an extremely rare injury, and the radiology report didn’t note it. The pain went away over the winter, so I figured it was nothing. This week, though, the pain came back. I finally figured out what was causing it: something about the fit on this last pair of Birkenstocks (that I bought last June!) is causing the ball of my left foot to hit the toe bar. Knowing that, it completely makes sense that there could be a stress fracture at the base of that second toe. I made it through the race today, even though I’m limping this evening. Those shoes go in the trash, though, and I’ll have to get a different pair of summer sandals. Hopefully the pain will go away again.

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