Sunday, September 27, 2009

Be an Eagle, GET OVER IT!

Every plant knows this: It’s only when you get crap thrown on you that you really start to grow. ** Scott Sorrell**

It has been a very long and stressful week since my 5K PR. The 9 miles on Sunday went okay, but I was pretty worn out from the race. The rest of the week went pretty much downhill from there. I think I am more stressed about Rusty leaving than I have let myself feel. Unfortunately, rheumatoid arthritis is very sensitive to stress and I have been getting little red flags all week. Saturday, I worked two back to back races, 5K and half marathon, and several hours of standing followed by a 5 mile run was too much for my feet. Saturday night they swelled up like balloons.

I was so upset that I let myself go on a major pity party this morning. I typed a long whiny blog about the details of each crummy run and all the things I hate about arthritis. Then I decided to get the heck over it. I put on my Brooks running shoes and wore them around the house for a while to see how my feet felt with some padding and then decided to hit the road.

I took it very easy and walked a tenth of each mile, but I felt good and got slightly faster as the miles went by. Now I’m tired, but it is a good tired, not the sick tired that I was afraid I would be. I’m still a bit tender from the RA, but my mind feels better and I’ve gained a lot of confidence knowing that if I had run my half marathon today, even being under the weather, I could have finished and probably even improved my time. Running in shoes was the pits, but worth the price to be able to run. Hopefully by my next run on Tuesday I will be back to bare, but if not, that is okay too, as long as I can run.

1 comment:

LazySusan said...

Yay, good to hear! Your blog is so inspiring to me. I have RA, I didn't take up running until after my diagnosis, and have just gotten up to being able to run at 5 mph, which is a huge coup for me. 'm in a good mood right now because I discovered the ChiliPad. It's a mattress pad that lets you cool down (or heat up) your bed, any temperature between 46 and 118 degrees. Other than soothing inflammation, the best thing about is is it brings the pain threshold below what will wake me up - so I'm able to get more sleep at night, which in turn reduces my pain.