Running and Not Running

This last week I had to put myself on the "I think I'm injured list". My left foot, which has been broken twice now, has been really bothering me since late last Saturday night. I did a couple of miles on the treadmill Tuesday night and it felt fine until a few hours later. Then, pain for two days that went away for me to run Thursday. Thursday I decided to try to run outside for a couple of slow, easy miles. Note to self: if you haven't been running your normal mileage it is almost impossible to "take it easy" when you do get out again. I ran the fastest two miles I've run in a good long while. Maybe because I had only run two miles all week, or maybe because I ran with music for the first time since I broke my foot last time, or maybe just because; it didn't matter that it was hot and muggy either. It felt nice to finish with a good pace, but I worried I had overdone it. Luckily my foot never did hurt (until today).

Friday night Parker got pretty sick, the sickest he's been so far. What seemed to be teething mixed with allergies turned into something crazy in the middle of the night with a high fever, runny nose and coughing. Since I didn't get to sleep until 7:00 Saturday morning, when I was supposed to be running, I didn't run Saturday. Instead Aarik, sick Parker, and I  drove down to Concord to do packet pick up for Aarik's half marathon, while Konnor and Mckenzie spent the day with Nana at home. They only had one day pick up (kind of inconvenient for out of towners) and we had made plans to stay overnight with close friends who live close by. The same people that did our last half and the one I'm doing In May with my mom and a few girlfriends. Honestly, I was disappointed in their "expo" which consisted of maybe two vendors and a few tables from the other races they do. The race itself was an awesome idea, and the medal was enough to make me want to run it, but luckily I didn't sign up to run with my hubby this time because it just wouldn't have worked out. Since we had to bring our sick, angry baby back home last night Aarik drove back up to Concord at 5 am to do his race. With all of the insanity of the weekend, changed plans, sick folks and the fact that he got bored training half way through and hadn't done much since, he STILL managed to pull a 1:48:18! How he does it I'll never know, but he is my running hero.I'm so proud of him and SO grateful to be married to a man that doesn't think twice about changing his plans when something pops up with kids or family life. It may be a little silly, but things like this make me love and appreciate him more. He has decided to concentrate on 5k's for awhile, partly because he doesn't really care for longer distances regardless of the fact that he runs them well, and probably partly because I have a plate full of training until November.

I've decided this week to start fresh with my training, take my mileage down and stick to a new training plan. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully we'll get some sleep tonight so that running this week will feel like something I love and not a chore. 10k is only 3 weeks away and then we'll be closing in on the half and registration and training for the main event! Any locals out there looking for a 5 or 10k soon should sign up for the Hospice Run in Winston. It definitely supports a good cause, is fairly small and was a fun event last time we ran it. This year it means a little more to me to support Hospice after seeing how well they treated my Grandma last year when she was dying and how great they were to the family after she had passed. I'm grateful there are organizations out there to ease the pain of a situation no one wants to go through but we all experience at some point.
Speaking of running for a cause, it's been a little while since we've seen any donations. The fundraising effort started out super strong and I'm so grateful to those who got us on track to meet our goal by the end of October. We purposely shared our fundraising efforts early on so that everyone could have time to find $5, or $15 or $50, and I feel like by Marathon day we will have exceeded our fundraising goal.  I LOVE running but would never take the time to share all of this with everyone in the world if it weren't going to be beneficial to someone else somehow. It's easy to share my training and little unimportant struggles along the way but, hopefully, the money we will raise will help people whose stories are of real struggles and aren't so easy to read about, or share. Spinal Muscular Atrophy is considered fairly rare, but it is far too common to be a disease that never has a happy ending. Please help me spread the word about Running for Callie and fighting SMA.