There are good people left in the world…even in Philadelphia

Yesterday, I ran the Race for Hope 5K in Philadelphia.  Subsequently, I lost my mp3 player case which also included my keys, license, cash.  I had these great headphones from Bose, which were worth more than everything else in the case combined.  Needless to say, I was freaking out.  One, because of the headphones, two, because I couldn’t get back into my house.  I paced up and down 4 block stretch between the 22nd and the fountains on Ben Franklin Pkwy for about an hour or so looking desperately for it and asking lots of people if they have seen it along the road.  I began thinking hard about where it could be and became concerned because I had this strange encounter with a man and his dogs, where his dogs were blocking the street and I couldn’t get by and he seemed to be doing it on purpose, it was weird.  I thought that perhaps I was being set up to be pick-pocketed…yeah this guy was that weird.  Somehow, I managed to not lose my cell phone and a bus token, so I called my roommate and my landlord to see when they were going to be around so I could get back in and I gave up looking and swallowed my loss.

On my way home, I called my husband and then my mom.  The word “pick-pocket” came out of everyone’s mouth before I even mentioned the weird dog incident, so I was beginning to accept my theory.  Though, I really hoped that someone had picked it up and was just going to mail it to my dad’s, which is the address on my license.

This morning, way before I wanted to answer my cell phone, a woman from the Race for Hope called me and told me she had my stuff and that she had gotten my phone number from the race.  She was set to mail it to the address on my license, but since the address was not local, she was concerned that I was stranded in the city or something.  I’m not stranded, but I would have rather have it mailed here than to my dad’s, so that is good.  I can’t even explain how happy I was, not just that I am getting my stuff back, but that someone didn’t steal it.  They did exactly what I thought a decent human being should have done, plus some.  I told her to keep the cash for her troubles, but I am not sure if she is going to.

Gym membership and other bitchings

Today I signed up for a gym membership through my school and I am happy.  Running in the city is harder than I thought.  There are so many people on the sidewalks during the day and it’s not really safe to go at night.

I should have just done it like 3 weeks ago, but quite frankly, I am sick of spending money.  It seems like everything has been an upfront cost…pay now, enjoy slowly over the next year.  From July until just recently, we have been shelling out money left and right…all up front costs.  We pretty much blew through about $10000 like nothing in the month of August for security deposits on two new places, getting our stuff and ourselves across the country, buying almost all new furniture for the new place in Tucson and bedroom furniture for the place in Philly…not to mention that in August we had 3 residences are were paying rent on all of them.  I’m not saying that it cost us $10000, because we did sell all of our old furniture (and almost broke even with this and what not moving it saved us), got a small moving stipend from his job, got the security deposit back on our old place, etc, but that much money went out and it left a bad taste in my mouth.  I should say, we don’t really believe in financing, so we had to pull money out of the savings account.  Watching your savings account drop by an order of magnitude is not cool.

My point being the last thing I wanted to do was pay upfront $250 to join a gym especially right after I was informed that I had to pay $140 for a bunch of shitty articles from Harvard Business school.  Weak.  Fuck the Ivy League.  It’s a total crock of shit with their articles and non-free gyms.

This blog leads me to this video, which is awful…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cGcqP0iJe0

Some day, I may devote an entire blog to this video.

My leave of absence

Dear blog readers…all of you. From the four people I know who (somewhat) faithfully check my blog, to the random people that for some strange reason find my blog interesting enough to keep coming back…and the tag surfers or even the people who search for “hydrogen peroxide asshole bleaching” and are directed to my blog…I apologize for the lack of action. I realized that procrastinating in the form of writing blogs, obsessively cleaning, over-sleeping and bitching about my issues aren’t going to fix them and I chose to actually deal with them.

If anyone ever asks you if you’ve known someone who was in both physical and mental therapy at the same time…you can say yes.  I completed both satisfactorily.

Mental therapy highlights:

It was great having someone to talk who was an unbiased party.  She helped me get my constant crying under control, and she empowered me to tell my advisor that I felt like quitting and that something needed to change.  My advisor was understanding.  He went on to tell me about all of the crazy students he had before me that just walked out and never said anything.  We also changed our meeting structure.  So far it is working.

The good news is that I didn’t quit and I feel much better.  The bad news is that I still hate school and I’m still in school…but I’m going to try to get the hell out as quickly as possible by graduating rather than quitting.

I didn’t have to go for long, only about a month.  She thinks that a lot of my bad feelings I have about the program and Penn is the isolation I feel there.  It’s true, the program kind of sucks like that.  I’m not great at it, but I don’t really have trouble making friends if I want to, I just don’t fit in my program.  There is a dissertation support group that I am considering joining in the fall, especially since my husband will be many, many miles away.

Recently I have found out that someone near and dear to me was having troubles with the same kind of feelings at school and also went to a counselor.  Misery loves company.  I felt so much better after hearing I’m not the only one.

Physical therapy highlights:

Today I graduate from physical therapy.  When I first hurt my knee, I had trouble walking, so running was out of the question.  After six weeks, I’m fully back to running.  I haven’t had any knee trouble yet, but I have lost all of my conditioning….stationary bike just doesn’t cut it for me.  I’m more stable and I can squat now…I have always struggled with squatting…so it’s almost better than before.

The combination of lack of running and the depression was pretty bad.  For the first time in my adult life, I have gained a (what I consider) significant amount of weight…though no one else has even seemed to notice, or at least they haven’t said anything.  But I feel like crap about it…so it’s coming off.  Pretty much, from the time I hurt my knee from training in March until Saturday, I continued to eat like I was training for the half marathon and then once the depression kicked in, I started eating junk food (mostly raw cookie dough).

As of yesterday, I have started watching what I am eating.  I hate doing it, because I freaking love fatty food.  I’ve never really been a candy person, but I love cheese, olive oil, fried chicken and regular soda.  So it’s going to hurt.

Knee diagnosis

The doctor thinks it’s runner’s knee (aptly named), which is when the tissue behind the knee cap becomes inflamed. No running for a while…stationary bike only. She recommended physical therapy to help align the knee cap better. After bending my knee in every possible painful way, she concluded there were no ligament or tendon tears, but that there may be a small meniscus tear or a stress fracture. She said, since I’m on limited weight bearing activity anyway, to wait a week or two to see how physical therapy goes, and if there is still pain then we’ll do x-rays.

The bruise remains a mystery, but she said it’s the greenest bruise she’s ever seen.

Damn you knee!!!

We’re leaving tomorrow for the Shamrock Half Marathon.  I doubt I will be participating.  The practice run today wasn’t too bad.  I went for about a mile and the pain started, though it was bearable…so only 12.1 miles with bearable pain…  However, at a point during dinner and at the grocery store, I was walking like I had a peg leg.  I’m still bringing my running gear, just in case I feel up to walking it.  It’s disappointing because I paid like $70 to run this race, and I trained for it in the cold.  It’s not that bad because I still get a free t-shirt and I’m in good shape for the Broad Street Run in May, provided I can correct this knee issue.

It will still be fun.  I’ll get to be mom for the weekend driving everyone around and holding onto their valuables.

This weeks running challenges

Challenge #1 – finding suitable running pants.  I cannot find a pair of capri-length running pants that I like.  In the stores, what they call “running pants” are more like yoga pants.  They’re too baggy.  I ended up with a pair of volleyball pants that are cotton and stretchy, they are want I wanted except the material.  I’m reasonably happy with them, but wanted a dry material.  Oh well, at least my knees will be covered.

Challenge #2 – shoes.  I think I need new shoes.  Which is disappointing because I loved these shoes and they’re only 7 months old.  It’s 6 days before the race and that’s cutting it really close.  I need to practice with my equipment.

Challenge #3 – knee.  My knees are bothering me, which isn’t all that unusual.  My left knee in particular caused me enough grief today to cut my run in half.  It hurts the most on the uptake.  I think it’s a combination of the cold and the shoes.  I’m planning on doing PT before the Broad Street.  The knees slow me down and limit the amount of training I can do…not that I’m all that serious anyway, but maybe I would be if I weren’t in pain after every run over 45 minutes.

Anyway, aside from my struggle with my knee today, I feel pretty good about the Shamrock Half Marathon.

The Shamrock Half Marathon

This year, i’ve started on my long distance running kick…I have run the 2007 Broad Street Run in Philadelphia (10 miles) and the 2007 Philly Distance Run (Half Marathon). My times have been rather unimpressive, though they impress a small physically unfit crowd, but my real goal was to finish and run the whole time, which I did. I want to do one faster, about 10 minute miles.

I’ve signed myself up, along with Mr. Derek, for the Shamrock Half Marathon in March. We were supposed to run a half marathon together to get in shape for our wedding, but Derek did this thing to his knee called tearing an ACL, and if you don’t know what that is, it is really bad, so he couldn’t do it. He’ll be all better come March.

Maybe we can actually run it together, it will be hard, but with some work we can. This is something that we struggle with. Our attempts at a friendly jog together aren’t always successful…it usually ends up with Derek a half a mile in front of me because he won’t slow down his pace, and I’m unwilling to break mine.

Pace is important. But there are different kinds of pace. My 5K pace is way faster than my Half Marathon pace, but it’s been so long since I’ve raced a 5K, that I don’t even know what that pace is anymore. It used to be 8:30 minutes/mile. When I ran 5Ks, I used to think, I could never run 6 miles or 10 miles, let alone 13 miles, but that’s because I was running fast. Now all I know is long distance, and my pace is about 11 minutes/mile.

You see, now I’ve trained to be a slow, long runner, Derek’s trained to be a short, fast runner. And really, you can’t do both. We need to find a happy medium between us. So if I can get a little faster (which I’ve been wanting to do), and Derek can learn to pace himself for long distance (which he’ll have to do), maybe we can do it together.