My weekend

I have written a little about my IT problems. My cousin who happens to be a PT recommended that I might want to try Trigger Point Therapy and that the problem might actually be a trigger point in my hip or butt. She said that there was a book that she recommended that we might want to look int. Tom and I trekked over to our local Barnes and Nobel and were amazed at the book. So amazed that we swore if we were going to get through Ironman training, that we would need it! We picked ourselves up a copy and hurried home to find out what could be wrong with me! :) THE BOOK IS AMAZING! After reading the section on knee problems, we identified where I might have a trigger point that could be hurting me. It's in the tensor fasciae latae (Yeah, I know... I thought I'd need to be a genius to figure all of this out too) and quite surprisingly, we were able to locate the point on my hip in no time. I went through the roof with pain when I found it!!! We massaged it out for a while then called it a night because we had a half marathon the next morning (and yes, I'm the experienced runner who did something new the day before a race). So this leads me to Saturday.


We had a half marathon here in Columbus. It's a pretty big one - over 5000 people, Bingham Racing puts it on, etc. Anyway I'm a little concerned about my knee, although with all the kneeding and massaging from Friday night, who knows. We get to the start and it's so crowded compared to some of the races that we've run recently. We have chips which is nice and it's an alright day to run - in the 40's but pretty windy. We take off and it takes us about 2 minutes to cross the start line. We dodge all the people who think they should line up with the 8:00 mile people and finally find our place. We take off fairly fast - our first mile was a 9:10, but the next three are 8:59's. I feel horribly sick (and did even prior to the race), although no knee pain. INSTEAD, my hip hurts! Lovely. I slow the pace, start to lose gas around mile 10, tell Tom to go ahead because he is having a great day and shuffle my way in the last 3 miles for a finish time of 2:03:58. Not too bad considering I felt like crap well into the afternoon. Tom almost PR'ed after leaving me, although finished in 1:58:32 and was about 30 seconds from a PR. If he had left me earlier (which I had urged him to do) he wouldn't have had any problems bettering his PR. Oh well... now he's got it in his head that he wants to run Chicago because he's faster and thinks he'll crush his full marathon time. I'm not falling for that one again! :) Plus it's only 2 weeks out from the Ironman and that's WAY too close for me (and him, but you can't tell him that and have him actually listen). We might be getting some friends to come do it with him which would be a lot of fun. We'll see.


So that was the gist of the weekend. Saturday after the race, instead of sleeping and laying around, I went to a bridal shower, then we went out for a great evening with some newer friends that we've recently met. We had so much fun! Sunday we laid around until dinner at mom and dad's which is always good time.


Oh... and one more thing... be VERY careful if you run alone, especially on empty roads where people might let their dogs run. Tom was out for a 5.5 mile run the other day on some country roads that we ALWAYS run. A gentleman had let his dogs out after work and they attacked Tom. He's alright, but they got a good chunk out of his tricep and back. And he's a big guy - these dogs were easily 150 pounds and he said that there was nothing he could have done to stop them. So just be careful...