Welcome Google searchers and Team in Training people!

Hi! I'm assuming you found this blog because you did a Google search for "Team in Training blog" or something similar. Welcome! I'm Amanda, and I thought you'd appreciate some info about me and this blog.

I started running in March 2009 and ran my first race, a 5K, in October 2009. In November 2009, my mother Pemle was diagnosed with lymphoma for the fourth time. She was first diagnosed in 1995 and has been periodically beating back the monster ever since. Wanting to take the proverbial lemons and make lemonade, I signed up with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training in early December 2009 to run a half-marathon. The farthest I'd ever run before signing up was 4.5 miles.

In 189 posts, this blog chronicles my adventures in running and fundraising from December 2009 through June 2010. I raised $4,060 for leukemia and lymphoma research and ran my half-marathon in 2:19:21, so I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams on both counts. If you're thinking about signing up with Team in Training and wondering what the experience is like, this blog is for you.

Here are a few of my favorite posts:

• "Runners are masochists. Discuss." An early group run in December 2009 in hair-raisingly bad weather.
• "Dog bowl forecasting." Who needs the Weather Channel when you can learn what you need to know about the weather from the dogs' water bowl on the patio?
• "Click." Running at an indoor track with a little help from a lap counter and "The Eye of the Tiger."
• "Running on empty." A girl running on an empty stomach, ready to kill for a bag of M&Ms.
• "Promises worth keeping." A rumination on the four promises that form the backbone of Team in Training.
• "Ten! Zehn! Dyesat! Diez! Dix! Dziesiec! Dieci!" My first-ever ten-mile run.
• "The thinnest of wedges between happy and sad news." Running, good news about my mom, sad news about my common-law father-in-law...getting toward the end of training at this point.
• My extremely detailed half-marathon race day report, in two parts with lots of pictures: Part 1 and Part 2.

Enjoy! Have fun reading, and if you do decide to take the plunge and run or walk an event with Team in Training, good luck and enjoy the ride! It's a fantastic experience.

I guess this is it...

I know it's time to wrap this blog up and move on, but to tell you the truth, I've been dreading this final post to my dear loyal readers who have been following my exploits since December.

First, the news. I am happy to report that my physical therapist rocks. His name is Chris, and one of the first things I saw at the rehab facility was a little bulletin board with a display saying "Go Chris! Boston Marathon time = 3 hours 31 minutes. Great job!"

Ever the consummate conversationalist, my eyes went pie-pan wide as I blurted out, "Holy crap! You ran Boston?!"

He just nodded, amused at my awestruck reaction, and asked me how I'd injured myself. When I started to explain dog agility, he actually cut me off: "Oh, yeah, I've seen it on TV. There's a lot of sudden acceleration and deceleration, a lot of sharp turns--and you use totally different muscle fibers for dog agility than you do for distance running. I'll show you what you need to do so you can go back to agility without hurting yourself again." Oh, and he owns a mutt named Keeley who loves to play frisbee. He takes her to the dog park all the time.

For a second, I actually thought I heard harp music. This guy is clearly the perfect PT for me.

We spent the next 45 minutes doing various exercises for the hip flexors and adductors, and then I got to relax with two big ice packs on my thighs while he got me copies of all the exercises with pictures to take home and do once a day on my own. My next appointment is tomorrow morning.

The only bummer was when I asked him if I could run agility this weekend. He just laughed at me. Next weekend is also out. That's three shows in a row I am missing because of this stupid injury.

This morning dawned migraine-ily. As in, I woke up with a migraine and wanted to beat my head against the wall. Running has decreased the intensity and frequency of my migraines by 80%. It has been a night-and-day change for me and a very welcome one. A few years ago I tried to count up all the days I had lost to migraines and came up with something like eight months!! That is a very long time. Of course, I have only run three times for a grand total of seven miles since the race, so I guess the good effects are starting to wear off. Another reason I desperately need to get back on the roads. I had to cancel an important meeting today and probably won't get an opportunity to reschedule it.

My mom had a throat culture taken to try and discern a possible cause for her window-rattling cough, and it came back as "moderate growth of streptococcus pneumoniae." (Does that mean strep or pneumonia or both?) At any rate, it is susceptible to amoxicillin, and that is exactly what the doctor prescribed for her, so it looks like they're on the right track.

And that's all I've got, which means it's time to wrap things up and say good-bye. I should be back to running in 3-4 weeks, and Chris said I could probably go to an agility show the weekend of July 10th, so although my misery is intense, it promises to be fairly short-lived. There ought to be a happy ending for me, at least.

My mom will have to persevere a little longer to kick cancer to the curb yet again. I would guess she has another one or two rounds of chemo ahead of her after she gets this cough taken care of. However, I have no doubt that she will do it. I just hope she gets a nice long remission out of this. Ten years would be good.

Thank you again to all of you who donated to the cause. I raised a total of $4,060 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society from something like 75 different check/credit card donors, along with many more who made cash donations and donated raffle prizes at my agility fundraiser. The total number of people who contributed is certainly over 100. Thanks to each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart. This has been an amazing experience in many ways, but I am still flabbergasted at just how many people reached out to help, and how many have lost a family member or friend to a blood cancer.

Thank you to everyone who has read along with the blog. It has always been a rather exclusive audience--I think the most hits I ever got in one day was 30--but I really appreciated every comment that you left, every time you saw me and said, "Oh, I really enjoy your blog!" and especially a few of you who said that I inspired you to start or revive an exercise program. Also, whoever was reading me all the way from the Philippines, thank you! I am also not sure who the UK reader was, but thank you as well! (I am getting this information from the little ClusterMaps app over on the right-hand side of the blog.) The German audience is a mix of family and friends, and I probably know the people responsible for 80% of the US hits, but there are definitely a few people I don't actually know personally, so yay for people who don't know me liking my writing enough to follow along! Thank you!

If I start another blog, I will certainly come back and post a link here so you can follow along if you like. And I will post something in a few days meant to help any new readers figure out what this blog is about, maybe with links to a few of my favorite entries. I will leave this blog up for a few years to help future Team in Training folks and other newbie runners who might be wondering what it's like to train for a half-marathon.

Until we meet again, run happy and injury-free, and remember that ultimately, the only reason to run today is so you can run again tomorrow.

Amanda over and out.

"BEHIND." "BEHIND."

I had to get up an hour early this morning to make sure I could walk the dogs, eat, and get cleaned up for my 8:25 appointment with the general orthopedic guy, the one who would surely tell me exactly what to do about my stupid bum leg.

Standing at the kitchen counter at 6:10 drinking and wolfing down a snack almost made me feel like I was going out for a run. (Sob.)

At the last second, I decided to grab my new Garmin and try it out on the dog walk. I managed to attach the new, smaller wristband yesterday, charge it up, and enter the kazillion little pieces of data it wants from new users (gender, weight, height, age, training level, blah blah blah), and I even went outside and watched it pick up satellites fairly readily. The only part of it that's still incomplete is the heart rate monitor. The chest strap that comes with it is a little too long for tiny little me. I had to order a special smaller strap that hasn't come yet.

I got the dogs outside, waited for it to pick up some satellites (not long, maybe a minute or so), and off we went!

"BEHIND," the display immediately said. "BEHIND." How rude! Cheeky, even!

Oh, right. The watch has a feature called "Virtual Partner." If you're the hypercompetitive sort, you can give this virtual partner a pace, and then the screen shows two little stick figures running. One is you, and one is the virtual partner whose butt you must kick. The display shows the two of you and notes who's ahead. Since I set the Virtual Partner for a slow running pace and I was walking dogs, of course I was going to be "BEHIND."

I quickly ditched that screen in favor of one that shows your time, your mileage, and your pace over the current mile. Apparently I walk an 18-19 minute mile with the dogs--when they're moving, that is.

The watch also has a feature called "Auto Pause." If you activate it, the watch will stop counting time whenever you stop moving or whenever your pace drops below a certain level. I had set mine to "Pause when stopped." Walking dogs means you are constantly stopping so that one or the other of them can sniff something, pee on something, sniff something very intently before peeing on it, OR pee on something before giving it a good sniff. You get the idea. It seems like I could never walk more than 15 seconds without one or both of them deciding they just had to sniff that tree or look up at the phone lines for squirrels. And without fail, the watch would give a cheery little "DEE-dee" and show "Timer paused." Once we started again, it often took 5 steps or so before it would sing out "DO-dee" and show "Timer resumed." We repeated this sequence ad nauseam for close to an hour:

• Walk a little.
  
• Dogs stop to sniff and/or pee and/or stare balefully at squirrels.
  
• "DEE-dee!"
  
• Start walking again.
  
• Wait for it...wait for it..."DO-dee!"
• Dogs find something else to sniff. Cycle repeats.
  

I was about ready to smash the watch with a sledgehammer after the umpteenth chirp. But it survived the walk and showed we'd walked 2.8 miles in about 50 minutes.

Now...the orthopedist. I won't name names to protect the moronic, but this guy was a waste of the planet's oxygen. Totally unhelpful, totally uninterested in expressing any kind of medical opinion, and the opposite of a fount of information. My socks have stronger opinions than this guy did. For example:

Me: "So, what would you recommend as far as resuming normal activity?"
Him: "Well, you want to slowly build things up and just do whatever doesn't bother you too much."
Me: "I have a Pilates class Wednesday nights. Would it be a bad idea for me to go to that tomorrow?"
Him: "Well, you can go and just do whatever's comfortable for you..."

Seriously. I could have gotten better advice from a Magic 8-Ball.

But one good thing came out of my encounter with the Medical Bowl of Oatmeal: a PT referral. I think a physical therapist is going to be able to help me figure out how to strengthen my adductors and hip flexors so this does NOT happen to me again. That's what I really want to take away from this rotten experience. I called a PT one of my Team in Training buddies recommended and their office was great. Really well organized, friendly, and they gave me an appointment with the guy I wanted for tomorrow morning. It doesn't get much better than that!

I also promised you a report on my mom's PET scan. Well, the good news is that the cancer is metabolically less active, which means it is getting weaker. But it is not gone. We can't throw confetti and yell "REMISSION!!" quite yet. The bad news is that chemo is on hold again while the doctors try and fix the persistent window-rattling cough my mom has been suffering with for several weeks now. They're not really sure what's causing it. Shocking, I know! Maybe I should send them a Magic 8-Ball of their own...

The week ahead

My race was three weeks ago today. It seems like another life. I haven't run since last Sunday, and I look wistfully, longingly at the runners I see while I am out walking the dogs. (I guess I should be happy that I can at least walk my dogs now.)

I'm a little surprised that I kept going for this long, but I think it really is time to wind up this blog. I will add the last few posts this week. On Tuesday, I'll report on two things: my visit to the specialist, and, far more important, the results of my mom's PET scan. I hope to be able to tell you that she is in remission and has beaten lymphoma once again. That would be a wonderful note to end things on.

On Thursday, I will post one final look at the season and bid farewell to all of you, my faithful, loyal readers (all four of you!), and sometime over the weekend, I will put up a post meant for new people who might find this blog in the future as they Google "Team in Training blog," trying to puzzle out what the experience might be like. I know I certainly looked for TNT blogs in the weeks before I signed up. To my disappointment, I didn't find a whole lot. This blog will tell them all they ever wanted to know and THEN some.

Having a good sulk

Another day, another miniseries watched in its entirety, yawn. I think my butt has worn its own distinct groove in the couch. I can walk reasonably well now--but I still can't run. At all. Not even for the forty-five seconds it would take to finish an agility course.

I could be at a cheap hotel lying on some flimsy bed with scratchy sheets and a butt-ugly bedspread with my dogs right now, maybe watching Animal Planet with them piled on the bed next to me, and looking forward to a wonderful weekend of agility. Simply heaven.

Except I'm not, because I had to withdraw from the show.

I did go ahead and get an appointment with a specialist, although the guy I wanted to see, a guy who came highly recommended and specializes in Sports Medicine, was booked up through June 21. So I accepted some other guy so I could get in on Tuesday, but now I've found out that his specialty is General Orthopedic Surgery. Super!! He will lose all interest once he decides it's not something you typically operate on. I doubt the appointment will yield anything useful.

I suppose I should just stop now under the proviso "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I'm going to bed.

Serious endorphin withdrawal

Well, here we are at Day 3 of groin pull recovery, and thankfully, I am starting to feel better. Maybe I will even manage to make it to agility this weekend. However, I am reminded that nothing boosts your mood like a nice run or going to Pilates class. I have done nothing more physically demanding since Sunday night than walk to the freezer and back to retrieve or return ice packs. As a result, I have been by turns insufferably cranky and hopelessly morose. Not being able to run or work out stinks.

I have watched a stupefying number of DVDs (three 5-hour miniseries and a long movie) and read three books I got from the library yesterday about sports injuries. Everything I've found says I just have to stick with the ice and ibuprofen until I feel better. Wheeee.

The doctor's office has not called back. Whatever. If I can't get in before Friday, there's really no point in going.

Oh, and my new Garmin Forerunner came yesterday, just to add that extra little poke in the eye. I wonder when I will finally get to use it?

Oh, the irony...

I think sometimes fate just likes to goose you. The universe has a surprisingly black sense of humor.

I have been thinking a lot this week about what will come next for me and my running. I played with the idea of doing another half-marathon this fall and then ramping up to a full marathon in the spring. (I would like to do a full marathon someday, just so I can say I've done it.) However, I quickly decided I didn't want to plunge headlong into another heavy training schedule that was going to eat all my time and take away from my OTHER hobby, one I have not been able to do in competition since Valentine's Day (yes, that's Tika the cyborg running dog in the video):


Since I have had to put dog agility on the back burner for so long, I registered for shows for three back-to-back-to-back weekends starting this Saturday. With that taken care of, I turned my attention back to mapping out my next training cycle. In the interest of cutting my mileage (and training time), I decided to focus on two fall 10K races. The first is actually not a 10K per se, but a marathon relay where one of the legs happens to be 6.3 miles, almost identical to a 10K (6.2, but what's an extra tenth among friends?). That's at the end of September. The second race is two weeks after the first one and is a bonafide 10K on the Towpath, the trail where I spent many, many weekends logging miles for my half. It's flat, it's a non-paved running surface, and there should be some fall color to admire. It could be a truly wonderful race if we get nice weather.

From there, all of the other pieces fell into place. I downloaded a Smart Coach 10K training schedule from Runner's World (it was free, but I think that's because I'm a subscriber). It's a 16-week schedule that begins a week from today and ends the day of the marathon relay. It looked very doable and said I would be able to race the 10K distance in 59:20. The thought of a sub-one-hour 10K thrills me to pieces (shut up, I know I'm a slow runner), so I said "SOLD!" and set it up. My long runs will be on Fridays so they don't mess with my agility weekends. I also signed up for another Pilates class beginning on Wednesday and for private Pilates lessons with Kim and her Reformer on Mondays. Cross-training: check!

The only remaining problem was that my shiny new SmartCoach schedule specified paces for each and every run. Not just "conversational pace" or whatever, but exact minute-and-second paces. I find the easy run paces very slow indeed, but if you're going to follow a plan, you shouldn't do a half-baked job of it. Ergo, I needed a tool that would let me see my pace on an ongoing basis.


Enter the Garmin Forerunner 405CX. Despite screams heard round the Internet about the overly sensitive touch bezel, it has an amazing array of useful features and also includes a heart rate monitor. REI had it marked way, way down this weekend with free shipping thrown in AND there's a $50 rebate expiring today AND I had a little REI dividend cash to sweeten the deal even more, all of which finally pushed me over the edge. I placed my order on Friday.

Remember that. I placed my order on Friday.

Yesterday morning, I ran with Tika again, covering 2.27 miles in 26:29 for another 11:40 pace. I was careful to stretch thoroughly afterward. That was only my third run since race day. I am not in any mood to rush my recovery. And I'm enjoying a bit of semi-laziness before the next training cycle begins.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to agility class, carpooling as usual with my friend Steve and his dog. It was a hot day, so we spent as much time as possible in the shade.

About two-thirds of the way through class, Tika was on a dogwalk (a straight obstacle about 27 feet long) and I was running next to the dogwalk in a nice straight line, when...

Twang! I could feel something slip/twinge on the inside of my left leg, at the very top near the hip--really the same place as my last muscle pull, except on THE OTHER LEG.

This pull also seemed quite a bit more severe than the last one--I had to get Steve to drive my car home, as my left leg was not up to depressing and releasing the clutch (it's a stick). By the time I got home I could barely get out of the car, and any movement involving muscles in that area hurt like holy hell.

After 24 hours of ice and ibuprofen, it still hurts A LOT. I am debating going to a sports medicine clinic. I looked through an anatomy book trying to figure out which muscle(s) it could be, but there are an awful lot to choose from in that area and I really have no idea. One thing is clear: the stretches I am currently doing are not even touching whichever muscle(s) this is.

So all of my fancy plans--the Pilates classes, the dog shows, the paced-to-the-second training runs--are currently in limbo. All because I had the audacity to run in a straight line at agility class. (Which is also how I garnered my last muscle pull.)

I really want to be a runner AND a dog agility competitor. I didn't think they were two mutually exclusive things!!