Gimme More...

After my exciting PR in UW Bothell I hurt my back doing yard work. Last week I had great difficulties to even walk, but I stepped on the treadmill every day to loosen some muscles. One day I walked one mile in 24 minutes. That bad it was. This week I started to recovered and ran on Tue and Wed just a couple of laps/day around our lake (1.6 miles per lap). The pace was around 12 min/mile, and the back still hurt and my body felt really heavy.

I had scheduled a 5K race today in Edmonds (Waterfront Festival), and as it was my PR for last year (29:01), I really wanted to do it. My friend Mike was going to rabbit me again to help me with a new PR. However, I was not feeling well. On Friday I told him that I would run depending on how I felt.

On Friday night I had some back pain and took 1 gr of extra-strenght acetaminophen with nighttime sleep aid. WRONG!!! When I went to bed I was so tired, and needed to sleep, but my legs and arms hurt and were restless. It had all the characteristics of RLS, which I hope was caused by the pills, because it was really uncomfortable, not a very nice feeling and I refuse to have that syndrome. My limbs wanted to go in different directions. After 2 hours fighting with the situation, I fell asleep.

Hubby woke me up at 7am with a nice, hot cup of cappuccino and I already had a headache. I decided not to race as my body didn't feel right. I got up, threw away about 490 pills to the garbage can, opened the shades and went back to bed. The day was especially gorgeous (we've had a gift of weather for the last 2 weeks, sunny and in the high 50's - mid 60s), and I couldn't be cozier in my bed... but I felt remorse.

Like if I could not make my own decisions, I asked my husband: What should I do? then he asked me: What do you want to do? My response was simple: I want to race but my body doesn't. Then he gave me the key when he said: "If I go by that standard, I would have never pulled the ivy from the backyard". That was it. He was right.

At 7:45 I got my cereal and yogurt, got dressed and at 8:15 I left.

Found Mike, got my bib #2090, jogged for 10 minutes, and ready, set, go. Mike rabbited me the last portion of the race where I reached 6.40 min/mile. Thanks Mike!!!

And... I did PR with 28:22 !!!! Division 6/21 - Overall 93/211 - Gimme More...