Living in denial

I hate it when people say I can't so something.  Most of my teen years were spent proving that just because you told me I can't, I'll show you I can.  It hasn't much changed in adulthood.  There are merely less instances of it now that I no longer live with my parents who were the ones most often telling me I couldn't.  But what happens when it isn't a person who tells me I can't?

After Ragnar (and it's intense training so I didn't die during it) were over in June, I went back to just running for the love of running.  And it was great.  Then a friend put together a team for the Ragnar in Las Vegas and invited me and Hubby to join.  I had to go back to training hard AND acclimating to running in the heat, which I still hate but can actually do now.  The only saving grace is that I have much less mileage and mostly downhill to run on this one so it didn't require as much training.  Plus, I knew I'd done Ragnar once this year so no sweat doing another one, right?  At that point all thoughts of doing anything else competitive for the year were abandoned and we proclaimed 2011 as the year of Ragnar.  To try and do anything else might just make me hate running.

And then one of my favorite cousins-in-law convinced me to do another half marathon since her sister was making her do it. It's the same half I did last year so I knew exactly what to expect with the course.  And, it is a week after Las Vegas Ragnar so I could do a half marathon training program - with a few tweaks - and train for both at the same time.  No sweat!

Now we are less than three weeks from that half marathon race day.  Next week is Ragnar.  I  need to taper off in preparation for Ragnar race day which means no super long run this weekend.  Last week I mapped out a ten-mile route and limped through only six of them when my calf cramped up and I couldn't stretch it out.  (Hydration, hydration!  You cannot slack on it when you are a runner!)  Yesterday my training plan called for a twelve-mile run but I hadn't yet done ten so I mapped out a little easier route and attempted the ten again instead.  And I made it seven before giving into the temptation to skip the last little loop and turning toward home.  At that point I was pushing myself to run and not walk because of the pain in my foot from my nemesis, plantar fasciitis.


I'm facing a sad reality that I may not be capable of running a half marathon no matter how much I want to or how much I've been training for it.  I have yet to do multiple runs in the same day to really be ready for this Ragnar AND I can't push my poor foot further than eight miles without excruciating pain.  My sister - who constantly amazes me with her powers of perception - told me yesterday that I should have been dealing with my "injury" for months instead of living in denial.  Case in point - I can't even call my plantar fasciitis an injury without quotation marks.

So, it is with much consternation and reluctance that I declare - officially now - 2011 as the year of Ragnar and only Ragnar.  If I can get my "injury" under control I'll try for another half next year just to prove I can do it.  And I'll take small comfort from knowing I'm achieving something just as significant.  By doing two Ragnars in the same year, I will earn two medals when we cross the finish line in Las Vegas next week.  And that "Saints and Sinners" medal will be awesome!