Soccer Practice

Since the race, I haven't been doing any running in an attempt to finish healing from the lovely groin pull. I've been using the elliptical at the gym, but not running, and limiting my walking. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing a very good job at limiting my food intake. Anyway...I was with Brennan at soccer practice the other night when he let me know that he couldn't find his ball. There were probably about 200 + people at this park, mostly parents and kids there for soccer practice. I proceeded to walk the path around the park looking for his ball. The park is right next to a creek, so there are a lot of trees. I was busy studying the forested area in hopes of catching sight of the lost ball when I got nailed in the head by a soccer ball. There were some teenage girls there practicing, and one of the forcefully kicked balls miss the goal and hit me. It hit me so hard that I literally saw stars. The force of it almost knocked me off my feet. Unfortunately, as I staggered and stumbled about trying to stay upright, I injured myself again. Besides feeling like I might have a week-long headache, I was really mad. I was finally feeling like I was within a few days of being able to run again, and all because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time I was back to limping. Oh well, what's another week or two of inactivity? And no, we didn't find his ball. Someone must have decided that they really liked it.

Cowtown Half Marathon

On Saturday, I competed in the Fort Worth, TX Cowtown Half Marathon (13.1 miles). Competed isn't really an accurate description, because really all I wanted to do was finish. I started training several months back and was so excited about the improvement I was making, and then POW! BOOM! BANG! and maybe even ZOWIE! I hurt myself trying to get the high score on the Wii Fit Hula Hooping. I do believe that I did manage to beat the top score, but then I paid for it dearly. Apparently I suffered a groin pull. My friend Angela and I have gotten a lot of mileage off of the work "groin". It's just one of those bad sounding words.

Anyway, for more than a month I've been trying to allow this injury to heal while keeping up my training. It didn't work so well, so for about 3 weeks, I didn't run at all. I went through with the race because it was a goal I had set, and I was feeling really pretty good. I didn't suffer too much during the race, but I wasn't able to run as fast as I could have done had I been able to keep up with my training. As the day of the event drew closer, we started watching the weather forecast. We have been having beautiful weather, so that was what we were expecting. As luck would have it, a cold front moved in the night before the race. It was freezing. To add to it, we got stuck in traffic, and missed the start of the race. We started 25 minutes late, so for the first 4 miles we ran past all of the walkers. At that point, I knew that I needed to slow down my pace, so I let my friend, Heather, run on ahead so that she would have a decent time. I hit the wall at about 11 miles and wasn't sure if I could keep it up. I really don't remember much about the last 2.1 miles, but apparently I conquered. Here I am on my way to the finish line.

Lance came to support me, and to take a few photos. He was so cold that it was hard for him to get a decent shot of an already moving target. Wow! Look how fast I was moving!

Crossing the finish line.

Heather and I sporting our medals and holding onto a nice hot cup of chamomile tea. It was great! I think I'll do it again.