Archive | All About Me

Not Just Another Excuse

By Dawn on April 10, 2013 Comments { 0 }

It all started during Bloomsday last year. The pain was a convenient cop-out for not running up Doomsday Hill. I had been running better than I thought possible. I wasn’t tired. I was in a great stride, comfortable, and enjoying the race. And then I wasn’t any more.

What began as a twinge in the ball of my foot quickly turned into “WHAT THE H#LL IS WRONG WITH MY FOOT!?!?!” It was so bad that I ended up jog-walking almost the entire final half of the 12k. More walking than jogging. That’s 6k, give or take a k. As in almost 4 miles.

But I was mad at myself. And my foot.

That pretty much ended my running last spring, until late summer when I decided to give it a try again. The thing is, my foot wasn’t the same as before Bloomsday. It felt like there was something “in there”– inside the ball of my foot. When I ran, my toes would go numb.

Ignore the ugly toenails

Anyone who knows me, knows that while I enjoy running, I am quick to make excuses why I can’t run or exercise. This was easy. It was a convenient reason not to run.

So did I do anything about it? Of course not, until recently.

The podiatrist and me, we hit it off. He’s a pretty cool guy. He told me that I’ve already been doing what he would initially recommend (~~make excuses for not running~~ cut way back on the running, and get good shoes), but since it hadn’t helped, it was time for the next step in treatment. I had x-rays, which showed I don’t have any breaks. What they also didn’t show is what he is sure that I have: A neuroma.

From what I recall from my Medical Terminology classes when I was going to school to be a Medical Assistant, a neuroma is a small tumor or growth on a nerve. And according to Dr. Foot, neuromas are not unusual in runners and other active people. Mine is on the nerve between my 3rd and 4th tarsal joints.

Let me just say that anyone who says that cortisone injection “should make it feel a lot better” is leaving out vital information. It burns like son of a gun first. And the getting better is a process.

OUCH

I endured 5 days of weird foot pain, including the entire ball of my foot feeling like it was bruised. I also had nerve twinges that felt like electricity shooting from my heel to my toes when I walked barefoot. It was truly bizarre, but it’s over.

Now that it’s starting to feel better, I think I’ll try a short run.

categories: All About Me

Tags: injuries, momsrunning, running

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Top 10 Action Items: Update

By Dawn on March 12, 2013 Comments { 1 }

On January 1, I created a list of Action Items for the upcoming year. I had them in mind, started working toward them, and then forgot about the list. It’s not that I forgot what I wanted to work toward, I just forgot I had posted the list. Until this.

It was Jess who made me start thinking about the list again. Let’s refresh, shall we? I know I need to!

1. The Bible in 90 Days. I haven’t posted about this in quite a while, actually. Yes, I’m still reading! I am, however, four days behind. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. Four days is better than the WEEK I was behind as of last week. I’ve been reading an extra half-day’s worth per day. Or trying to. I caught up on a whole day just this morning. Oh but I’m not done with today’s yet. Whoops. So anyway, still reading.

2. Prodigal Planet, my new site, launched on March 1st! It’s pretty exciting to see how it’s touching parents already. If you’re struggling with a tough teen, this is the place for YOU.

3. Homeschooling. It’s going well, although not perfect but what is? We are still beginning later in the morning that I want to. Late as in 10-10:30am. But it works. As long as I am on task, they are on task! *forehead smack* We’ve started doing timed freewriting and while I can’t say they love it, they don’t hate it and I think it is going to push them to actually WRITE something. I know it has helped ME tremendously, as I open up a composition notebook and just WRITE too!

4. Passports. We have the applications all filled out but haven’t taken them in to the Post Office yet. I’ve been waiting on E to be avaible to go too, but I may just go take mine in without him.

5. Teaching our boys to find joy in helping others. I had no idea how the Lord would move in this area, but he sure has! We have been serving a ministry called Blessings Under the Bridge, every other week for the past 2 months. We go down and serve the homeless population downtown Spokane by distributing clothes, toiletries and meals. It has been an amazing blessing for us and our boys LOVE doing it! They willingly skip their Wednesday karate class every other week for this. Here’s a slide show that my husband & boys are in, from under the bridge.

6. My health. I’ve sorta fallen off the wagon with that. I was avoiding all dairy and wheat, had lost 12#, and was finally feeling really GOOD. No more gut aches. I haven’t gained any back, but I’m maintaining and started eating wheat again and dairy once in a while… and the gut aches are back. I’ve been sporadically running and going to Zumba, which I really, really need to get back on schedule with. Zumba is twice a week and if I run 3 times a week I will be getting exercise FIVE days a week. So I need to just do it.

7. De-crapification of cluttered spaces. I have not even begun this. We have the month of April off from school, so I plan to really hit this one hard. April and December are my decluttering months, and I will make the most of it! I feel like I’m drowning again.

8. Training for Bloomsday. I think we have already established that my WANT-TO and my JUST DO IT haven’t been very close lately. Ahem. And Bloomsday happens 2 days after we get home from a week in Hawaii. We’ll see how THAT works out.

9. A digital schedule with alarms. I started to do this, but outside of putting my life into my calendar on my phone, I haven’t been able to find a good schedule app. And then I had to reset my phone and lost the calendar. I know. When will I learn?

10. Social Media Scheduling. This is one area I AM working on streamlining, completely. If you follow me on Facebook you probably saw me friend a bunch of people as “ME” but a second me, then I deleted the second me, and created a FB Page as ME, and sent out a slew of “Like My Page” requests. Um. Yeah.

So I’m having a bit of an identity crisis, but it’s okay. I have a new email address, my Google+ profiles will be merged in 2 days, my Facebook friends all know I’m not really crazy even if I seem like it, and I really want to stay in touch with you so I created a bunch of FB Lists to manage the chaos.

SO, Like my page, Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter, and hang out with me here. Maybe we’ll all get more done if we help each other.

Okay?

categories: All About Me, Home & Family, Homeschooling, Social Media

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I’m Running Bloomsday!

By Dawn on May 4, 2012 Comments { 0 }

Yankz laces on my running shoes

After not nearly as much training as I should have been doing, Bloomsday 2012 is upon me. This Sunday, at 9 o’clock in the morning, I will be joining over 50,000 runners and walkers for a 12k race!

This is my second Bloomsday.

I still don’t really consider myself a “runner”. I don’t run consistently enough. I just don’t feel like I fit that term very well… yet. But run I will. Last year, I completed the race in 1 hour, 35 minutes. I was placed in the Lilac start group, which is waayyy in the back, just in front of the moms pushing strollers. I did a LOT of dodging walkers. I mean, a lot. You’ve never seen a crowd until you have been among 55,000 people all walking, jogging and running on the same single city street.

Credit: BloomsdayRun.org

“Walkers to the left, runners to the right” was the request that blared over loudspeakers throughout the first mile of the course. I think I was the only person who heard it, because the walkers sure didn’t! There was a single file line of joggers/runners that hightailed it up the sidewalk– and through people’s front yards– on the left side of the street. Treacherous pathways! But I did it. In fact, when I hit the 1-mile marker I realized that I had run the entire first mile, something which I had never done before.

This year, I was placed in the Orange group because of my time from last year. I’m excited about it, and just a bit nervous. This means I will be with people who plan on moving their feet– jogging or running rather than the snail’s pace walkers I was stuck behind last year. In fact, I caught up to a lot of Orange group people last year about midway through the course, and they started 15 minutes before I had. This year I just hope they don’t leave me way behind.

Have you ever run a race before?

categories: All About Me

Tags: Bloomsday, momsrunning, running

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Race Motivation

By Dawn on April 15, 2012 Comments { 2 }

@MamaKautz and I before Bloomsday 2011

NOTE: If you’re visiting from the Ultimate Blog Party, my PARTY post is right HERE!

I recently mentioned that my husband and I are wanting to take control of our eating and eat better so we’ll FEEL good. Along with this goal, I have another one. You see, I’m a wanna-be runner. I enjoy running, most of the time. Okay, actually I don’t enjoy it unless I do it fairly often. Then I LOVE it.

I ran this morning. I made it 3.03 miles. The last mile I was able to get into my “zone”. I wasn’t looking around, or thinking about a whole lot, or dodging rocks, I was just running. I love it when I get to that point. I can just GO. But I lost “the zone” after just a few minutes when a dog stepped out of its driveway, causing me to be on the alert. Then I was tired. Seriously tired.

You see, I have a bigger goal than just running: I’m running Bloomsday again this year! Bloomsday is 12k– 7.46 miles of fun with 55,000 other people! And if that sounds kind of crazy, that’s because it is. It was my first real race ever, last year, and I had so much fun! Mama Kautz and I both ran it last year. Not together, because she was in an earlier start group than I was, but we rode the shuttle there together and met up afterward. Do I want to win it? NO WAY. I’m happy with my 10.5 minute miles!

My plan this year was to get a personal record–a PR– on last year’s time. Last year I finished in 1:35. This year I want to do it in 1:25. Only trouble is, in order to get ready for something like shaving off ten minutes, I need to actually BE RUNNING. Regularly. This week, I ran Tuesday morning (2.68 miles, following my boys on their bikes) and this morning (Sat., 3.03 miles). First runs in 3 weeks. I’m back to needing to walk a lot more. I’m fatter. I’m tired-er. This is not going down the way I’d planned it.

Bloomsday is Sunday, May 6th. I have 21 days. Three weeks to try to get myself ready to run it. I can do this! Last year I didn’t do much training at all and I did pretty good. I have somewhere between 9-14 training runs I can take before the race. Potential. Motivation.

They say the hardest thing when it comes to running are the first few steps out the front door. I agree. And I’m going to do it anyway.

So tell me, what do you have to psych yourself up for in order to get it done?