June 2015 Mileage: Hanging on

June was very touch and go, both in terms of my ongoing state of Exhaustion as well the tibialis posterior pain in my right leg.  It was also the first month in which I ran significantly less than I did in  that month of 2014, the year of never ending injury.

I just never could seem to get in a groove.  I'd run one day and be totally fine, and then the next day I would go out and couldn't run one step.  The injury never seemed to progress any further, thankfully.  I just couldn't rack up decent miles, and I couldn't be consistent.  I never even tried to make the trip out to Horsetooth or Lory because I never knew from day to day whether I'd be totally fine, or whether I'd get to the end of my driveway and have to turn around and come back due to pain or exhaustion, or both.

One of the highlights of the month was when we took a camping trip to Gould and I got to run the hills at 9000ft.  I've run at that elevation or higher before and don't recall ever having trouble, but this time I definitely felt it all.  Maybe it was because I started out running uphill for 3 miles straight.  Still, I was having one of my "good" days, my leg didn't hurt, and it was great.

I'd hoped to get in another 20 miler before the Bear Lake Marathon, but couldn't manage it.  I was glad I'd done an impromptu one at the end of May, because that was all I got.

I was strangely calm going into the Bear Lake Marathon, really unconcerned about how my leg kept hurting.  "It'll be fine on race day," was all I could think, with a shrug.  Just like Bear Chase.  Something will happen on the start line, and everything will be okay.

And it was.  The day we left for Idaho, I still had that all-too-familiar pain as I walked down the stairs and loaded the car; I even had pain on the morning of the marathon as I climbed down the ladder from our pop up tent.

But I got to the start line and ran the entire race without so much as a twinge.

I really liked the Bear Lake Idaho Marathon (I wrote about it here).  A lot of it was on dirt roads, and since it was geared towards Marathon Maniacs and 50-Staters (some of the participants were running 4 marathons in 4 days), it felt more like an ultra to me.

Unfortunately, the course was short, so my finishing time of 4 hours does not seem genuine.  I'm trying not to be disappointed about that, but I've haven't been able to break 4 hours since hyperemesis and giving birth.  "Your best race is yet to come," my new marathon friend told me during the race.  Someday your kids don't require so much of you emotionally, physically, and you can be a real, actual human being again.  I'll have to get The Exhaustion and The Injury under control first.  And maybe not choose a race on a 80 degree day at 6000+ ft elevation.

In the past, I've often gotten injured in the weeks after a marathon because I don't rest for long enough and don't realize that I needed more rest until the damage is already done.  This time, we went to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons for almost week afterwards, and I didn't run a step.  I didn't even hike or walk that much--the blister and sub-blister on my left foot hurt too bad, and once that started letting up, the pain in my right tibialis posterior returned.

As soon as we got back home, I gingerly set out for a test run to see how things felt, and I ended up going 8 miles.  I guess it felt okay.

That weekend, we took another trip to Gould (yes, we went camping again after only 2 nights of being at home) and I had a chance to run in the State Forest State Park.  I had intended on only going about 8 or 10 miles, but I just kind of zoned out and kept running instead of turning back.  I also missed the turn off to the trail I was headed for, so I logged a couple of miles in swamp (who would have thought there are swamps in Colorado, at 9000ft, even) with thigh-high grasses and even more mosquitoes than had been at Grassy Lake.

Trees down.

I didn't know exactly where I was, but it sure was pretty.

If you are supposed to turn, they put up big signs.... like this one...

If my leg hurt, I didn't notice it because I was too busy dealing with other things, such as 1) Is that mountain lion scat; 2) Do rattlesnakes live in swamps;  3) Have I entered a never-ending maze of logging roads, in which I will be lost for all eternity; 4) Can you die from loss of blood due to mosquito bites; 5) If only I had known I would be running 16 miles, I would have brought more than 40 ounces of water with me.

Even though I did, literally, make it out of the woods during that Gould run, I wouldn't say that I am out of the woods in terms with this injury and The Exhaustion.  I feel like I'm hanging on by a thread-- I'll have a good day followed by a bad day, and I've got precious little time to train for Howl.

June was okay, but I'd like the miles to come easier, to not feel like I am fighting for each and every step.  Hoping that July will be better.

112.86 miles this month. 714.39 year to date.  Still 101.17 miles up from where I was last year at this time, but my lead is dwindling fast, and it's looking like I will be hard pressed to make it to 1500.

Thanks for reading.