In its genesis, this blog was created to discuss running. It then slowly began evolving into a cooking blog, a running blog, a musings blog, and then...it just stopped. Now, I'm back to where it all began, and I'm starting again with talking about running. In 83 days, I'm planning on running the Marine Corps Marathon for the first time. It will be my second marathon, so I'm not exactly new to the distance, but this race holds great significance for me.
There's a long story here, and it will find its way to the blog in due time. Part of the story is why I've signed up for this marathon four times, but this will be the first time - knock on wood, say a prayer - that I actually make it to the course...life happened, as it were, the previous three times, in a way that did not sync up with me being able to travel to DC to do the race.
The other part of the story is about why it is so important for me to do it this year. A quick glimpse - until last Friday, I had not run for 15 months. The first 8.5 months were due to my pregnancy and some heart rate issues that made me feel it would be folly to run, given my "delicate state". The second 6.5 months were under a doctor's strict orders not to run. After Mary, my beautiful daughter, was born, my health was in a very ill-defined state.
Due to severe complications - complications that resulted in a 4-day NICU stay for Mary and an 8-day critical care/transplant ICU/OB ICU stay for me - I was told it would be at least a year before I ran, maybe "never" before I ran because of both the severity of my complications and the unknown territory of my prognosis. My condition - known as HELLP syndrome - was rare enough in its severity and my resulting survival that the doctors merely shook their heads when I asked what my next steps should be. Two points that should perhaps clarify how severe my illness was - one, I was medically evacuated immediately after delivering Mary and having an emergency laparotomy to the critical care/transplant ICU team in Indianapolis. Two - I did not get to see, touch, or meet my precious daughter until five days after her birth.
By the grace of God, I've healed enough over the past 6.5 months to be cleared to run again. In later blogs, as I chronicle this journey, I will go into a much finer detail about everything that has transpired this year. Many people close to me know this story, but this blog marks the first time I've gone public with it.
But for now - to put it as simply as I can - I'm running again. I've missed it so very much, and even though a marathon may seem a foolish goal in such a short period of time, I'm ready for this. I stayed in excellent shape throughout my pregnancy with lower impact exercises, and once I was cleared for lower impact work post delivery I started up again. I won't be breaking any records for time, but just to be there and to accomplish the feat will be more than enough to satisfy me.
Today's workout was a slow five mile jog around my favorite place in Indiana - the lakes at the University of Notre Dame. Thanks to the iMapMyRun app on my iPhone, I have a GPS tracker that lets me know my pace, my route, my distance, and best of all, lets me save and share it as I please. As a throwback to my earlier writings on this blog, I went ahead and marked a song as a "TOD" - track of the day - that served as great motivation for me. (Don't judge the song, haha - it's one of my husband's favorites and as he's currently on a 365 to Afghanistan, I love having reminders of him everywhere I go...)
No comments:
Post a Comment