Another busy month for me!
On May 2nd, I traveled to Seattle where Cindy Bingham and I then drove to Vancouver, Canada to surprise Donna Canterna. She was running her 1st marathon in support of her oldest brother who has Parkinsons.
I couldn’t believe we actually pulled this off . There were times, both Cindy and I almost slipped when talking to Donna. She was surprised! But more importantly, Donna did her 1st marathon in 5:45! Way to go, Donna!
And thank you to Susan Howard Wade, Pamela Sue Wuest, Joyce Leslie, Danielle Rosenow, and all the ladies that I missed who knew and kept the secret for us so we could surprise Donna.
The Vancouver BMO event this year was rainy and cold. And even though I PR-ed (2:40:17) by 5 minutes off my best half time, I must say I didn’t enjoy this as much as I normally do. I am sure it had to do with being so wet running that I never really saw what was around me as well as being so cold afterwards. It took 2 very hot showers and the heater in our room turned up to 85 degrees to finally get me warm.
But with this PR, I been thinking long and hard about starting to train for a marathon in October. Steve Merkel, my coach, assures me that I can do this. But he has also told me not to register yet for 3 reasons, it never sells out, we may have a heat wave which we don’t want to run in, and I may suffer an injury. So we don’t register until we are about 2 weeks out.
What this means is I’ll have to be more focused on my training as it is not just doing the weekly runs and Saturday long runs. There is strength training, spin, and yoga classes to help me across the finish line.
As a family, Mac, Niki, BJ and I did the 5K ROC in Carlsbad. It was a fun and wet race with lots of obstacles to either go over, under, or between. We all voted that the best obstacle was the one we had to sprint to before flopping down on our tummies as we slid through soap bubbles. Sorry, no pictures as there were no photographers during the event.
Surgery for my gall bladder on May 11th was a success! It was basically a 2 hour laparoscopic surgery. I was at the hospital about 8 hours. I came out a bit swollen around the belly where they punched 4 holes into my abdomen to suck out the gall bladder. Once out, the doctors told me I had one rather large gall stone and several smaller ones.
The best news, I no longer have issues with heart burn and acid reflux. The somewhat bad news is I found out my blood pressure is slightly elevated. I’m slowly dealing with that now.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to start running as soon as I wanted to. I did start walking within 2 days of surgery to help get the swelling down.
The swelling and the stitches made running harder than normal. My motivation to train like I normally do wasn’t there even though I knew I was running San Diego Rock ‘n” Roll Half Marathon with BJ, my son-in-law, on June 1st.
To train, I had to wear my compression capris and a Spandex cami under my shirt to keep everything from moving and pulling while I ran. The compression tights I don’t mind, but for some reason the cami bothered me. And if truth be told, even with the capris and cami, my muscles around my abdomen would occassionally hurt and ache when I ran.
With this surgery, I have fallen behind in my yearly goal of 1000 miles. I’m at 348 miles and short by 68 miles to keep on track. I will need to re-focus to get back on track. Unfortuately, I won’t be able to get them all back in a month. But if I do the marathon training, those miles will quickly be a mere blimp on my yearly mile goal.
For now, I just need to focus on not getting behind more. The rest will take care of itself.