Optimistic; Ambitious; Crazy…meh, I don’t see the difference

It’s Labor Day weekend and I’m off from work until September 15th.  Roll out the parade because this is a much-needed break!  Today I am grateful for sunshine, fresh air, my health, my husband, and of course, PTO (paid time off).  🙂

At this point, I would say I’m about 90% healed/recovered from my “tibial stress syndrome” injury from early June.  This has been a long road of rehabilitation, physical therapy, and mental fortitude, but I can confidently state that I am officially on the mend.  I’m running again, but only within the past two weeks have I been able to run more than once a week, and I’m only running 2-4 miles at a time (for now) on crushed gravel/treadmill (no pavement yet).  I will say that once I seem to have turned the corner and could start running again about 4 weeks ago, progress has been pretty quick and steady.  I lost a lot of endurance and cardio/pulmonary strength, but it’s coming back quickly.  I think once you achieve a certain level of fitness, unless you quit/are forced to abandon physical activity for years, your body remembers how to perform.  I’m determined to come back from this injury stronger and smarter than before.  The word gratitude again comes to mind – I am so very grateful to have legs to carry this body and that I am able to get out and pound some trails again (finally!!).  

I recently explored the Waterton Canyon trail here in the Denver area (I’ve been down there many times, but only to either grill/camp out or do stupid stuff back as a teenager).  It’s an amazing path through a canyon, paralleled by a winding river, with beautiful views.  It’s scenes like these that remind me why I frickin’ love running:

I have a 15K race on October 5th for which I registered months ago and before my injury.  I am crossing that finish line and will do everything between now and then to train and finish strong (whatever that looks like at the time – I’m not going to push this injury – if I take walk breaks, I take walk breaks).  Also this morning, I finally signed up for a 2015 race I’ve had my eye on for about 4 months now, the Colorado Marathon in Ft. Collins.  May 3, 2015 it’s just me and the Poudre Canyon.  I can’t wait!  I may have gotten carried away with the race bug this morning, or I was just feeling cocky now that I’m running again, but in addition to signing up for that race, I also signed up for another race I’ve had my eye on for months – the Highlands Ranch Backcountry Wilderness Half Marathon, on November 8th!  I know, I’m loony tunes…or maybe brilliant and going to use it as my muse to fully recover…I’m not sure.  What I do know is that running is a sport in which you have to challenge yourself to make progress, so I think I’m covered with the “challenge” part for now…

I am also happy to report it’s been a month now since I gave up meat and…………I don’t miss it!  Honestly, and trust me, no one is more shocked about this than me!  I had an epiphany that I was only eating meat because I’ve eaten meat my whole life.  Don’t get me wrong, meat is tasty – I can still acknowledge that and wish you meat eaters out there the best of times.  However, the fact that I don’t miss meat and have not struggled with vegetarianism for a single second since I started this, hit me like a ton of bricks and I don’t anticipate going back.  The absolute only thing I could even fathom being tempted by at some remote point in the future is sushi – I love sushi.  I made a deal with myself that I would simply cross that bridge when I get to it.  Meanwhile, vegetarian it is, and I love how I feel.  I’m eating more vegetables than ever before and I’m not going hungry.  Now that I’m running again, I’ll keep you updated on how I may need to adjust what I’ve been eating for the past month to make sure I properly fuel my body, but I have complete faith it’s possible to be a runner on a vegetarian diet.  How can you not love meals like this:

Veggie tacos – yum!

I feel a little bit like a hippie hipster going vegetarian, but I don’t ultimately care.  This is doing wonders to help me manage my weight, cut down on binge eating, continue the journey of recovery from an eating disorder, and pursue health.  I’m committed to staying on this path.

Run and eat happy!

Becky

 

   

 

 

Progress and Discipline

A lot of positive things have occurred in the past week and I feel encouraged by several new developments. First, my exploration of vegetarianism has thus far been quite pleasant and rewarding. Second, I think I have turned another corner with progress in recovery from my tibial stress-related injury!

For the past three weeks I have slowly been incorporating jogging/running back into my routine. It started with only being able to jog for half a mile and not being able to try again for a week because my leg was aggravated, to 1 continuous mile twice a week, to 2.5 miles, to today when I ran 3.5 miles! The particularly encouraging thing about today’s run was that it was really more my decreased cardio-pulmonary stamina than my leg that kept me from going further.

I’m really encouraged by this because I know I can build that stamina again fairly quickly and I think it’s a sign that my leg is truly on the mend. It still gets inflamed and I do need to really pay attention to it while running, but it’s feeling so much better. A post-run icing and some Aleve are calming it down within about 30 minutes now. Considering how far I’ve come in 3 weeks where I couldn’t run more than a half mile and it was inflamed for a week, I am quite happy with that progress. Today was really the first time since this injury I felt like my 15K on October 5th was still going to happen. It’s been a good day 🙂

Yesterday was my 5th wedding anniversary. Neal and I both took the day off and went up to Winter Park to reprise a bit of a weekend we took on our first anniversary 4 years ago. We got day passes for the alpine slides (if you don’t know what an alpine slide is, Google it and then make doing this at some point in your life a priority – it’s a thrill that will remind you of being a kid again) and spent the whole day just tooling around the mountain.

Riding up the Zephyr Express chairlift to the top of the peak.

View from the top. Colorado’s majesty never gets old.

Highlights of the day include Neal crashing on the alpine slides (to avoid hitting a girl who was going way too slow to be in the “fast” lane of the ride), getting stuck on top of a slope when they shut the ride down for a while due to rain and deciding we would just hike straight down a ski slope to get to the bottom, and delicious Mexican food for dinner, where I happily ordered veggie enchiladas and they were amazing!

Cutting meat out of my diet hasn’t been nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Of course I say that now while I’m still really enthusiastic about it, but in all sincerity, it hasn’t been that bad. I meal prepped for the week last Sunday and made a concoction out of quinoa, sweet potato, beets, avocado, red pepper, golden raisins, and almonds. It was delicious and took away so much stress and anxiety I have every morning trying to figure out what I’m going to take to work each day for lunch. I just grabbed an already portioned tupperware of this stuff each day along with other snacks like veggies, fruit, and yogurt, and the thought was removed from my week of meals at work. I know some of you whom I follow do this each week too, and I must say, I am a believer now in its benefits!

I ate it cold each day and loved it!

I have been making fruit smoothies with flaxseed or chia seeds for breakfast and eating lighter, but vegetable-filled dinners. I definitely anticipate days or weeks where my resolve for this weakens, but after just one week I feel so much better. As I’m able to continue ramping back up my running mileage over the coming months too, I hope to really get in tune with how fueling my body well helps my running.

The thought I had over and over again today while out on my run was that if I have the discipline to be a runner, I have the discipline to forever change my relationship with food. That’s what’s motivating me right now. That’s my focus.

What’s keeping you going these days?

Becky

“I’m exploring vegetarianism”

We all know in addition to exercise/activity, diet is a huge component of good health. I have even been told by some nutritionists that health and weight loss is really 80% what you put in your face and 20% about the activity level. As someone who doesn’t struggle to be active, but does struggle with their diet, this is a little discouraging. Fear not though, I have been facing this challenge of food-weight-body-image for a long time, and I don’t intend to back down now.

What’s different now, you ask? Well, every day is a new day and I won’t pretend I haven’t ambitiously embarked on a new path before, only to kind of sabotage it at some point and revert to old ways. All I can say is that my progress overall is in a forward moving direction, and when I step back and really examine things in chunks of say 12 months, or 5 or 10 years, I’m light years away from where I used to be. That’s all anyone can really ever ask of themselves.

With that in mind, what I’ve explored before, but would like to re-visit with a different strategy, is the concept of mindful eating/eating with purpose. I have a problem with eating for non-biological reasons like stress, boredom, anger, celebration, etc. and the result is nothing less than treating my body poorly. Period. I know what healthy eating is – in fact – I’m really lucky in that I genuinely love almost all vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, etc. and love to try new things. I don’t dislike eating healthy, I just tend to 1) have an issue with portion control, and 2) have a sweet tooth. Enough said.

So, I’ll write more in the coming weeks about this experiment, but here’s the gist of it: I’m exploring vegetarianism for an undefined period of time. My reasons are not moral or environmental, but frankly, simply that this will force me to learn more about different sources of nutrition and re-evaluate my relationship with food. If I force myself to try new things in order to nourish my body, learn alternate ways to get essential nutrients, and really tune into how properly fueling my body makes a difference, I am guaranteed to walk away with some new appreciation for food. I may never go back to meat or I may just as easily return to it. However, I know for certain that I want to make a point of reflecting on what I think I know about food and how I eat. “I’m exploring vegetarianism” is how I am putting it. I don’t yet know what I’ll find, but that’s the point of the journey.

Tonight’s dinner consists of this and a big salad, which is totally fine by me 🙂

Also, I want to thank everyone for their support here. It really means a lot that we are strangers scattered across the globe and take the time to be kind to one another. I think that’s pretty cool.

Becky

Identity

I’ve been away for a while, I know. I’m not even sure I’m totally back now, but I felt just a twinge of inspiration this morning, so I thought I would get a few thoughts out before the feeling passes.

In the immediate sense, I’m sitting on my couch right now when I should be in Evergreen having just finished a 10K race. This stress fracture has pretty much completely sidelined me for just shy of 9 weeks now. I’m making progress, seeing a physical therapist, and have just recently been able to jog very short distances at very slow speeds, but to say this is a huge bummer and has tested my mental strength would be a tremendous understatement.

In a larger sense, I have been forced to contemplate my situation – why did I start running? What has running given me? Do those benefits exist (or can they be maintained) in the absence of running? What makes someone a “runner”? Do I have the mental fortitude, will power, desire, and patience to make it through this injury without completely abandoning running and the healthy lifestyle changes I’ve made over the past year? A lot of these questions are largely unanswered in my head right now, and I have found it challenging to find alternative outlets in which to explore them in the absence of running. If I can’t even figure out how to contemplate and sort through these things, how am I going to address them?

I’ve also been giving a lot of thought (the struggle I’m having is that I still have all of these unexplored topics in my mind, but I’m having trouble really tapping into them to resolve them without running) to my relationship with food. To say that it’s unhealthy doesn’t even begin scratching the surface of the issue, however, let’s just leave it at that for now, and let me also simply state that I feel compelled to undergo a fundamental shift in that relationship. I am not quite sure what that change needs to look like, how I’m going to do it, or when I’m finally going to summon the strength to stop making excuses and take the path of most resistance to effect real change in my life. The only thing I know with certainty right now, is that a change must occur. I’m somewhat stuck in a place that is much healthier than where I was 5 years ago, but is by no means close to where I need to end up.

So that’s it for now. I need to exchange some supportive insoles I bought yesterday so that when my leg calms down again in another few days from my jog 3 days ago, I can attempt another 2 mile jog. Slow and steady, right?