Inappropriate Doctor Visits

I've been having a bunch of doctor's visits recently because apparently it's not super normal to have a mid-shaft femoral stress fracture.

My doctor ordered the initial bone scan, a DEXA bone scan to rule out osteoporosis and osteopenia, and also a ton of blood tests to check my blood calcium and thyroid function. 

Osteopenia.  Ahhhsteopeenia. Something penia.  Sounds dirty to me.. I actually laughed when my doctor said it.  Yes, I have the maturity of a seven year old.

Speaking of being inappropriate at the doctors, I have a history of saying inappropriate things to my doctor because I get nervous and try to be funny.

Doctor:  "Are you sexually active?"

Me:  "No, I just lie there."

When discussing why my previous doctor didn't do breast exams, I pretty much shouted

 "Doesn't anyone want to feel my boobs!"

So when I was at the bone scan on Friday, the guy said (referring to the area of uptake on the scan)

"Well, it's pretty big, but I've seen bigger!" 

My eyes got wide, and I opened and closed my mouth a few times, and then (here's where I'm really proud of myself) DIDN'T say "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!"  It was the most self-control I've ever exhibited.

Big Bummer.

That black spot on my right leg?  It's a stress fracture.



 Those multiple black spots on my shins?  Stress fractures. 



I think my body thinks I'm an 80 year old woman so my bones are just breaking all over the place.



To say that I am bummed is a pretty big understatement, but I know things will be looking up soon.

And no, I don't have a weiner.  It's my tailbone.  :)



Radioactive Pee Pee

 

Went in this morning to get the radioactive stuff injected into my veins for my bone scan.

Felt a little sci-fi when the technician dude told me to make sure I drink a lot and go to the bathroom frequently as the radiation would be flushed from my body in my pee pee. 

OK, he didn't say "pee pee", but I have two toddlers at home and think primarily in toddler-ese...

*Important Update*

I just went to the little girls' room, and am proud (but a little disappointed) to report it wasn't glow in the dark or reflective or anything.

Keep your fingers crossed on no stress fracture... I find out in two hours!

Northface Endurance Challenge!

I was am so excited to be helping to spread the word about an amazing running event:

The Northface Endurance Challenge

September 17-18, 2011

Check it out:

This race sounds awesome - there are distances from 5k to 50 mile, run on the beautiful trails around Madison, WI. 

From their website:

"The forested area, massaged by monstrous glaciers many millennia ago, contains wake-up-call hill climbs of 200-300 feet and enough undulating terrain to challenge even those granite-legged mountain runners. Overall, the soft, forgiving course is 80% singletrack, with slightly wider, equestrian sections sprinkled in between. This is the least technical of all the Endurance Challenge courses."

I am so bummed I can't run this - I would LOVE to do a trail race.  Unfortunately, it's the same day as the Fox Cities Marathon and Half Marathon, so I'll just have to wait until next year.

Speaking of which.. this would be a perfect meet-up next year for all of us Midwest bloggers!!

Who's up for a little trail running?

I was offered a free entry to the race, and as soon as I heard about the opportunity, I knew who'd I'd contact.

My beautiful friend Angie, who is a ridiculously speedy and awesome runner, and a great mama to two beautiful little boys is going to tackle the half marathon.

Best part, I've roped her into authoring a little guest post for me sharing her race experience.

This woman is a super runner, check out her stats:

-High school and college cross country runner

- Ran Boston TWICE!

- PRs: 5k - 19:58, 10k - 38, Half Marathon - 1:40, Marathon - 3:29

Can't wait to hear all about the race from her and plot my race strategy for next year!  And maybe some of her speed will rub off on me..... :)

Bone Scan Eve

I'm not even doing a Things I Hate Thursday today, because this not running thing has made me cranky enough that I hate everything! 

Well, not really everything.... but I am anxious to be running again.

I haven't run since the Chicago Rock n Roll Half on August 13th, and I didn't run much for the two weeks prior due to some thigh pain.

I went to the doctor on Monday, and she thinks I have a femoral stress fracture in my right leg, and did an X-ray. 

X-ray showed nothing out of the ordinary, except a little thickening of the bone where it could be trying to heal itself. 

I'm scheduled for a bone scan tomorrow... and there's a lot more involved than I thought!

I go in at 8:15am for them to give me an IV with some radioactive material, and then I have to wait around for three hours while it slowly kills me  is absorbed into my bones, and then I get films taken for an hour or so. 

I'm hoping it's not a stress fracture, but I'll be happy with a diagnosis and a game plan.

I have three half marathons scheduled in the next few months....

Green Lake Half Marathon - September 4th

Fox Cities Half Marathon - September 18th

Zooma Great Lakes Half Marathon - October 22nd

I hate it when race fees go down the crapper.  :( 

I'm much too cheap to handle that well.



I'll keep you all posted... hope everyone has glorious runs today and posts all about them so I can live vicariously through you...

Tandem Ice Bath and Post-Race Celebration

Happy Sunday! 

It's been a great weekend - good family time with my sweet kids and my sweet hubs... I'm a lucky mama.  Be prepared this week for some picture overload of my sweet kids.. finally clearing out the memory cards on my camera.  :)

Anyway!  Let's talk about ice baths.

OK, I know ice baths are awesome for recovery, blah blah blah.  Before I took my first ice bath, I thought  it would make me feel better, and beyond that, it was something kind of crazy and funny you do for the good story... you know, like running in a blizzard, streaking, etc.

Then I took one.  And it was bullsh*t.  It HURT!  It was not fun, it hurt my feet so damn badly I wanted to cry. 

While in Chicago for the race last weekend, Rachel and I contemplated our post-race strategies, and the availability of only one tub for ice baths. 

What resulted was glorious.

Behold.

The Tandem Ice Bath

That's me on the left and Rachel rocking the high bun, and my awesome mama and my hilarious cousin you can hear badgering us. 

Anyway, after that, we headed to PF Chang's for some awesome grub and a stiff drink, and then I explored the hotel a bit. We stayed at the Hilton on Michigan Ave in Chicago, and it looked like a palace.

Then we went to Miller's Pub for some good grub and fantastic beers.  I love IPAs, and there were multiple varities on tap.  Deeeeeelicious. 

Momma and me!

Momma love.  :)

Ow Ow, hot runner ladies!

Alright, that wraps up the Chicago weekend. 

And now, I have some potential bad running news.  I'll update tomorrow after my doctor's appointment... but I'm having some significant, limping-while-walking pain.  Balls.

Chicago Rock 'n Roll Race Recap

The morning of the half, Rachel and I popped out of bed at 4:30 after a restless night of sleep.  It was one of those awful, never ending kind of nights and it was a relief to finally hear the alarm go off.

We ate our bagels and Gatorade (and coffee for me), and that (ahem) got things moving. 

 Three times. 

Each.

Yes, it is absolutely necessary to post a picture of how many pre-race poopers you were graced with.

Around 6:00am, we headed out the door to walk across to Grant Park to find our corrals.  It was cloudy and cool... perfect running weather

I hit the porta-potties once more, and we were off to our corral.

That's a lotta crappers.

We found our corral easily, and the race started right on time.  I hugged Rachel as we were running to the start, and I took off, not to see her until the finish.  Or so I thought.  Dum dum dumm.....

Beautiful streets of my Momma's hometown.

I felt OK as I first started running.  I've been worried about several nagging injuries, but nothing was hurting me when I took off.  It was not even a half mile in when I decided to try to find the 2:00 pace group and see how long I could stay with them.

Miles went by, I missed seeing my mom at mile 2, which bummed me out, and I couldn't find this damn pacer guy.

I noticed my Garmin kind of acting goofy - my pace would vacillate wildly between 5 and 15 minute miles, but I figured it was the tall buildings, and didn't give it much thought.  I just kept my eye on the time and distance, and tried to find that 2:00 pace dude. 

Running through the streets of Chicago is amazing.  It's my third time doing this race, and I just love it.

Around mile three I found Mr. Pace Guy... holding his sign like a grocery sack dragging down by the ground.  Come on man, how much more effort does it take to rest that little stick against your shoulder?

About four miles in, we ran through this incredible gauntlet of the craziest, loudest spectators I have ever seen, and my pace picked up considerably for about a mile.  I lost Mr. Pace Dude, and judging by my Garmin, I was several minutes ahead of the 2:00 pace, so I was feeling good and ready to smash into the 1:50s.

Mile 5.  ha.  Mile 5 was my freaking wake up call.  This was the first mile marker that I actually saw on the course, and when I looked down at my Garmin to confirm the distance, my Garmin was reading....

5.65 miles

Crap.

So now I knew my Garmin was way off, and I was running, much, much slower than I thought.  It was also around this time that the clouds lowered and it started raining.

 

The rain cheered me up quite a bit, as did seeing my mom around mile 7.  Am I the only mama's girl that gets all choked up at races when she hears her mommy?

 

I kept an even pace, still looking out for the pace guy, who I figured was either in front of me or right around me.

The next few miles were rough.... I felt very nauseous, goosebumpy, and shaky, and I wanted to be done. 

Around 12 miles in after my slowest mile yet, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

It's Rachel. 

Are you freaking kidding me?  I'm pretty sure my face when I turned around was a mixture of the pain of running 12 miles, total surprise, a teeny bit of joy for her, and a fair amount of pissed-offness that now I was going to have to pick up the pace.

We picked it up for the last mile and really used each other to keep the pace.  We chugged up over the last (and first) hill of the race, and we took off at that hilarious speed I call "half-marathon sprinting" which is lunging forward and trying not to faceplant.

I crossed the finish line in

1:59:28

Overall:  4004 of 15259

Division: 488 of 2488

Gender: 1571 of 9480

We got our Popsicles, headed over to find my mom and cousin, and then got our post-race beers.

Mmm... Beer at 8:30 am.

Why do we always look surprised when we high five?

And to wrap up this gloriously long post, I'll give you a teaser of what's in store for you tomorrow. 

Post-race recap and the Tandem Icebath

Q: What is sexier than two sweaty girls in a tub of ice?
A: Nothing.

Until tomorrow..

Chicago RnR Expo = Good Deals and Epic Tatas

Good morning!

I'm finally far enough out of the post-race haze of exhaustion to write about the race. 

Early on Saturday morning, my mom and I drove to Chicago, picking up Rachel along the way.  We stopped at an amazing Jewish deli in Skokie for lunch... does it get any better than a giant corned beef sandwich with extra mustard for pre-race food? 

We headed to McCormick Place for the expo, and it did not disappoint.  For those of you who haven't done a Rock 'n Roll race... it's worth it just to see what a circus the expo is.  I am usually not an expo person, but we still ended up browsing around for a few hours scoring some great deals.

We posed for some goofy pictures:



Me and Rachel, trying to be confident.



Rachel tripping the fast lady runner.




And then we saw her.



Check out the sweater puppets on this broad.

 Seriously, who is sitting in some factory, making mannequins, and saying to himself, "You know what would really sell more clothes?  Extra huge boobies with two inch nipples." 

Rachel and I were giggling like elementary school girls for a good fifteen minutes after we spied her.

Mentally, I was feeling so nervous it was making me nauseous. 

We stopped at the PF Chang's booth for a fortune cookie... and mine was pretty appropriate.

For those of you with crappy eyesight like myself, it says "We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are."

 It was actually around this time that I began feel little twinges of confidence amidst the sea of anxiety I felt like I was going to freaking drown in.

We had some dinner at Giordano's pizza, and were all in bed by nine...

Tomorrow, I'll tell you all about the big day... on my big day!  (It's my birthday tomorrow, and Rachel's birthday today!!)


  

Race Weekend!

Happy Friday to you!

This is a big weekend.... it's my favorite race of the year!

I'm super nervous and have had a really hard time figuring out my strategy for this one.

I've run a bunch of halfs (halfs?  halves?) and save one horrible, horrible race, all of them pretty much went exactly the same.  Start out with 10:00 minute miles, slowly getting faster, and I usually finish my last couple miles under 9:00s.  I never feel totally spent at the end, and the majority of the race is well within my comfortable conversational pace.  My times are usually 2:06-2:10.

So!  This time around, I plan on running a little harder.  My ultimate goal for a half this year is to break 2:00, but I'm 99.99% sure this is not going to be the race to make that goal - I just am not in 2:00 shape.  I'm really hoping to do this at the Fox Cities Half Marathon in September..

Here are the goals for Sunday:

C Goal:  2:09

 Same as my Oshkosh Half Marathon time.  I'd be pretty happy with this as I've had a tough summer of injuries.

B Goal:  2:06

This would be a PR for me and cause for a super awesome finish chute step-clap celebration.

A Goal - 2:03

  If all of the stars align and I have a great race, I think it'll be right around this time.  I'll have to get back to the hotel quickly before Rachel notices I've pooped myself with excitement.

Good luck to all of my fellow racers this weekend, and see you on the other side of this thing! :)

Back up to Speed (haha, get it?) and Things I Hate Thursday!!

Whoa, I must be back in true blogging form... a play on words before the post even starts... I'm on FI-YA!

OK.  I've been paying someone to be my friend  working with a coach... the amazing and super sweet Adam... (See Adam, I even worked in a strikethrough in your honor.. does this make me your favorite student?)

Anyway, he's been putting together some super fun workouts for me and pushing me to run faster than I thought I could.  Apparently, to get to my goal of sub-2 in the half marathon, I actually need to push myself... who would've thought?

It's been going great, but after a particularly unpleasant ten miler the weekend before last, my body laughed at me and said "No more running for you buddy."   I had some pretty gnarly thigh pain and was worried I had a stress fracture in my femur.   Also, every muscle in my lower body felt like it was on fire... for about a week. 

I took some time off, and now I'm staring down into the fiery eyes of the Rock 'n Roll Chicago Half Marathon... and I pretty much have to restrain myself from pooping my pants whenever I think about the race... Tomorrow I will bring you a very special post, where I tell you all of my ridiculously lofty goals for the race and you all can come back on Monday, see that I failed miserably, and have yourselves a nice little chuckle with your morning cuppa joe. 

Without further ado...

Oh, wait, a little bit more ado. 

Ha, so this is is pretty much the reason I came back to blogging - apparently there are a LOT of things that piss me off.  My husband so sweetly asked why I wasn't blogging... and he said I'm "different" when I'm blogging regularly.  What he means is "Please, please honey, go bitch about all of this stuff to all of your blogging buddies so I don't have to hear you yell about high fructose corn syrup and when everyone just sits there at a four-way stop."

Anyway!

I HATE that I am strong enough to run for hours, do at least sixty real pushups (damn you 100 pushup challenge), carry 50 pounds of wriggly toddlers up and down the stairs, yet I am apparently completely unable to OPEN A DAMN GATORADE!!!!  Seriously, I must have the weakest little girl hands or a huge mental block, but I try to open those damn bottles and I maybe am successful 1 out of 4 times.  I once resorted to drilling a hole in the cap and pouring it out (plastic shavings and all).

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  I actually feel a little better getting that out. :)

Couldn't Get Rid of Me That Easily...

Whew - that was a looong break from blogging there.  I needed it.

Summer with kids is THE BEST. 

Here's the part of the blog where I overload you with awesome pictures from my time at the cottage, and then tomorrow I'll be back to regular blogging in all of it's glory.  We have a lot to talk about.

(like Chicago Rock 'n Roll 1/2 Marathon in FIVE days!!!)



If any picture sums up Cottage Week.. it's this one.  My brother and I in a heated race to the raft, where we climb up, chug a beer, dive in, and swim back to shore.  Naturally, I'm getting a head start on the beer drinking ... (some people might call it "cheating".  Whatever)



That is one determined child. 

My sweet Nolo man...

Alex might have inherited a pinch of his mama's sassiness.

Bestest friends... can you spy Rachel?

Swimming with Daddy.

 Hope you all are having a fantastic summer!  I'll never leave you again, I swear... :)