Well as per usual I have done a really terrible job of keeping this blog up to date. But things have been busy these past few weeks! The first two weekends in July Jeremy and I were in Iowa--first for his cousin's wedding then for his 10 year High School reunion (oh he's such a youngin'!) Then I went to Colorado for a week and just got back yesterday.
But this blog isn't about the fabulous jet-set life of Jeremy and Erin Stoll--its about running so I guess I should start talking about my marathon training progress....or...er...lack of progress I should say. You see I hit a little bump...well...a big bump actually. Here's the story:
If you have ever been to our little bungalow of a house, you know that it was built in 1950 and that houses built in 1950 have attic space or as its sometimes called "dormer" rooms upstairs. Well this is where our bedroom is. Anyone that has been to our home has commented on how steep and narrow the stairs leading up to our bedroom are.(see picture) "wow you should really be careful!" or "Wow when you are pregnant there is no way you should be going up and down those stairs" ok, fine. Yes we know--they are steep, the steps themselves are pretty shallow and they aren't carpeted so yes...we need to use caution going up and down the stairs. But we've lived in this house for over 2 years now. I've been up and down those stairs a million times--in the dark, with laundry, carrying the dog, barefoot, with socks, hell I even managed to carry an extremely large and heavy suitcase down the stairs in the dark at 4:30 in the morning when I surprised Jeremy last year on his birthday with a trip to Washington DC. All of these treks up and down stairs were incident and injury free. In fact, up until this point the only Stoll family member who hasn't fared so well is Gus. Sometimes he overestimates how many steps he can jump down before he lands face first in the hallway.
But three weeks ago this all changed.Jeremy and I were getting ready to go to our friend Brandon's going away party at The Max--a super-duper gay dance club. So of COURSE I HAD to wear my most fabulous, high heeled, knockout shoes to this event. Here comes the "I told you so" part of the story. So lately Jeremy has been asking, telling, begging and insisting that I NOT wear my shoes (which 99% of the time are of the high heel variety) down the stairs. He claims that this is a safety precaution, of course, but he's also quite concerned with the state of our wood floors. Upon close inspection of our treacherous staircase you will see....um...hundreds? No---dozens of pockmarks on the stairs....yes these are from my high heels. Ok I admit--no one to blame but myself here. I understand his concern for our stairs, but really I've become quite good at making it down our stairs in heels just fine, so for weeks--I've been ignoring my husband's request.
HOWEVER....the night of the party at The Max we were running late (of course) so I was hurrying about upstairs trying to build an outfit around my silver snakeskin, four inch, Michael Kors shoes that I love, love LOVE. (Look, when you love a pair of shoes that much--yes, you build the outfit around them. Just look at the picture...hello.) As usual, Jeremy is yelling at me from the sofa "Hon, we are supposed to be there now!" So I get myself together and hurry down the stairs and then....
I slipped.
I slipped and slid...yes SLID down 4 stairs before finally stopping just before the hallway. My left butt cheek hit the edge of one of the stairs as did my left elbow and the outside of my left ankle scraped along the side of one of the stairs as well. OUCH.
I think I screamed a little, but of course Jeremy heard the entire thing and probably felt the whole house shake, lets be honest. But I heard him yelling "Ohmygodbabyohmygod" and he reached the staircase in time to see me land...if you want to call it that. It hurt so bad that the pain didn't really even register till a few minutes later. Sort of like when you stub your toe and it takes a few seconds for the pain signal to really reach your brain. Why does that happen anyway? Well the pain was like that times 10.
We assessed the damage. My butt was sore for sure but only red at that point. Same thing on my elbow and the ankle was fine which was surprising considering I've sprained it like 17 times just walking down the street...in completely sensible shoes I might add.
So what could I do? Get up and go to the Max of course! I was sore, but not overly so and since the ankle was fine, no need to change the shoes! In fact immediately after the fall the staircase looked worse than I did. There is a 3 inch long groove or as Jeremy likes to say "skid mark" that my heel made in two of the stairs from when I slipped and another stair has a hole--yes HOLE, from my right high heel when I finally landed. Sigh.
So the next day I reassessed the damage to my body...mainly my er...bum...and oh dear god was it bad. I didn't take any pictures because, well, there are just things that you don't need to see, my bum bruise being one of them. So I'll just paint you a picture: The bruise, which Jeremy lovingly referred to as "The License Plate" was nearly 7 inches long, 3 inches wide and roughly the shape of Madagascar. And it was black, yes BLACK in the middle (where the cheek first hit the edge of the stair) and then various shades of blue, purple, green and yellow around the edges. And oh did it HURT.
But have no fear--I figured that since it only hurt when I was sitting and not walking that running should be fine too. Oh dear god was I wrong. Two days later (on 4th of July) we were planning to leave for Iowa at 9am. I was scheduled to run 11 miles that day so I got up at 6:30, got ready and headed out for a quick 11 miles.(hee hee--I'm totally joking of course. This distance would take me at LEAST 2 hours, who am I kidding?) From the very first running step I knew that the damage on my butt went way beyond an external, Madagascar shaped bruise. With every step it felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife in my left butt cheek. I thought maybe if I kept running it would feel better...not really. Going up hill, running on a flat street and downhill--it didn't matter. The stabbing pain was intense and there was no way I would be able to keep going for 11 miles. So I had to go home and walk on the effing treadmill. I've never been so mad and so frustrated! Its not that running 11 miles is great fun, but when you are training for a marathon, its important that you do the long runs--this is how you build endurance and they are the most important runs you will do in your training. I sent a quick text to my virtual running partner in Houston, Kim with my dilemma. "You'll be fine!" She said. "We've still got 14 weeks of training to go. Don't keep trying to run because you'll overcompensate with your other leg and end up in worse shape." She had a point.
So needless to say--running took a back seat (no pun intended) for the better part of 2 weeks. I had to skip my 11 and 12 mile long runs. During the week I walked, biked and swam (which was HARD let me tell you! I've never been so tired than after 45 minutes of swimming! No wonder Dara Torres looks so amazing!) But slowly, I've been able to run a little more.
This past week I was in Colorado, so slightly out of shape and in extremely high altitude I decided to try and run anyway! WTF? The most I ran all week was (I'm hoping) 3 miles. But I was S-L-O-W and felt like I was working really hard due to the thin air. But I noticed that as I ran, my bum would actually start to feel better and toward the end of the runs the pain had almost completely gone away.
I'm reading "Marathoning for Mortals" and it says that if you miss a workout, to just keep going and don't try to make it up. So I was scheduled to run 9 today, but tried to eek out 10 miles just for the hell of it. It was not easy. I'm guessing that I did closer to 9 just by the time, but I'm thankful to be able to run again--although I'm slow as hell.
So did I learn my lesson? Hell yes I did. And I'll let Jeremy keep this "I told you so". But will I stop wearing heels? NEVER.
