Am I still a runner?

I haven't blogged here for a very long time. I've been blogging on a new web site, and it no longer links to this one, which feels obsolete, and yet, and yet. Somehow I came across these posts from last year, and found them quite moving. It was good to have a place to put down my thoughts about training and exercise. Exclusively. It was good to have a place devoted simply to my physical activities. It's not that they're separate from the rest of my life, but the details are often quite banal, or repetitive, and I don't tend to want to record them on my main blog.

I ran the Toad last fall, and two weeks before it, ran a half-marathon. I got a personal best in the half-marathon, although I can't remember what it was. Something in the vicinity of 1:48. I did not get anywhere near a personal best in the Toad, recording my slowest time ever. Again, I can't recall the exact time. It was under 2:25, but over 2:20. Considering that my best time, in 2011, was about 2:18, that's a bit disappointing, but hardly unexpected. I will likely never train at the level of that 2011 year, the year of the triathlon. I enjoyed the race, and that's what counts. It fell during a ridiculously busy time, when I was travelling a lot and teaching and doing readings and heavy publicity for Girl Runner, so the simple accomplishment of showing up and running the race felt wonderful.

My training dropped off while I was touring out West. I ran, but less consistently, and sometimes on a treadmill at hotels. I was fighting a pain in my right buttock that persisted but didn't exactly get worse. But then, in November, I started running with my 12-year-old daughter at an indoor track, and we sprinted, and during one of those morning sprints, I felt a new and much worse twinge. The pain in the buttock was accompanied by pain running down the back of my leg to my knee. I finally decided to see a physio. An x-ray ruled out any kind of fracture in the back. I didn't run again until January, and even then ran only sporadically and for short amounts of time. Instead, I did spinning at Personal Edge, swimming, walking, yoga. It was not fun. I'm not exactly out of it yet, either.

I'd been steadily improving, and seeing a chiro, doing an hour's worth of physio/strength exercises every day (seriously!), returning to running gradually on an indoor track and on my treadmill. I was running without pain--or without much pain. But then I got the flu. For two weeks, I did nothing but lay on the couch. I didn't run (of course), but I didn't even do my strength exercises, or see the chiro. Just this week I felt well enough to return to my regularly scheduled exercise routine. I ran with a friend on Tuesday morning. The pain was back. It was like I hadn't gone through those months of rehab! Well, there is a slight improvement--the pain seems to be relegated to the hamstring and not to the tendon at the top of the leg. I've run twice this week, both very slowly, agonizingly slowly, and with pain.

But I'm beginning to think that I may never run without pain again, and maybe I'll just have to accept it. That said, I'm back to doing my strength exercises and stretches every day. I will make an appointment to see the chiro next week again (he does needling that seems to help relieve the pain). But I'm going to keep running regardless of the pain. It clearly did not help to stop running, so I don't think rest is the cure. I may need to change how I think about myself as a runner. I may need to accept that I won't be able to run as fast or as far, depending on injury and pain. But maybe it will get better. I'll keep working at strengthening the lesser-used muscles. I may need to tweak my stride. I'm staying upbeat and optimistic about my future as a runner.

Also, I'm playing a bit of soccer again, just with my family, and not on a team … but it's so fun. It makes me want to sign up with my women's team again. Dare I do it? I need to decide by tomorrow. Ridiculous, I know. To consider playing when I'm so injured I can hardly run. But oh. A girl (okay, middle-aged woman) just wants to have fun.