An Advertisement for the Power of Body Pump

This post has been a long time coming, but since all of four people still read this (hi Cordelia! hi Mrs. Heinz/Linda – I know you’re Linda but you’ll always be Mrs. Heinz first in my head and you can blame my mom for that , hi RyRy, hi Ilse!) I thought I could get away with it. (and now I am slyly backdating it.)

I’ve been wanting to write it, though: on October 14 I ran my first real race in over a year, the true test of the surgical repair. (Though it involved a race number, running with the Turkster in the August dog race series does not count. Mostly ’cause I had to drag her. And she swam.)

And how did it go????

Massive PR (ok, a PR was a given…I’d never run an 8k race).

How awesome? I sent Dr. Awesome Doc and my PT an email love letter afterwards. 8:06 average pace, and 6th in my age group. Promise there were more than 6 people in said age group. Fastest mile 7:44 (maybe a tad faster – missed a marker, so a 2 mile marker was 15:28).

Was the course mismarked? Maybe. Probably not.

Was I out til after midnight at a show of my favorite band in the world – wondering most of the evening why the crowd looked so middle-aged? (oh wait…)

Had I barely trained, only running over 5 miles a handful of times in the past…ummm…year?

Did I have to think long and hard about what one even wears to a race?

Yes, yes, and yes. Who the heck cares? I went into the morning just wanting to get a race under my belt, and to finish without falling, tripping, or somehow mangling myself. I did. I spent the remainder of the day on cloud 19 – and perplexed how I could be a solid 15-20 seconds faster per mile than I was before the surgery.

The only answer, other than bionic thread used to sew up my tendon: Body Pump. I had nearly the same experience in June during Bike MS, when, with very little training, I comfortably finished 100 hilly miles in two days. I haven’t been too disciplined (yet) about running (oh….the irony), but I am (generally) very disciplined about going to Body Pump 2+ times a week.

I’ll take it. I am officially signed up for Myrtle Beach as my comeback marathon – after almost FIVE YEARS I am hoping to get over this unlucky 13 I seem to be stuck on and bag the 14th.

Unlucky 13? Well, for years I’ve been saying this photo was the best thing to come out of the marathon. Comment yourself.

Time to stop procrastinating/excuse-making and actually start running – and see just how great the tendon repair hold actually is.

About these ads