Goodbye 2009

I can't believe we have made it to December 31, 2009, but it's here so of course we have to do a blog on all that has gone on this past year.  I also can't believe the first decade of the 21st century is coming to end. I remember the last day of 1999 like it was yesterday, gathering Y2K supplies wondering what in the world this new century would hold :) Of course, it has been no different than the centuries before it. It is incredible, though, to look back on these past ten years and think about all that has changed. I was just a silly, boy crazy, 12 year old girl, now I am a much more mature 22 year old getting ready for my wedding to my prince and graduation from college. And in 2019....I'll be in my 30s!! Yikes :)
It's amazing how much can change in 365 days, last New Years I was out with my girlfriends planning how we were going to be single best friends forever and move to New York when we were done with school and be city girls ;) Right after the first of the year, I had an injury that once again sidelined me very close to Boston, I didn't know what this would mean for the biggest race I would ever run and soon enough I found out. After a very short training for Boston, my dad and I made the trip and I finished the Boston marathon. I thought this would be my proudest moment of the year, but then I met Lance 8 days later.  Immediately, I knew I would marry  him.  My parents have always told me they prayed for the man God was preparing for me, and when I met him I would not have a doubt he was "the one". When I met Lance, these prayers were answered.  I have been blessed with a man that exceeds any and all expectations I ever had in a mate and I cannot wait to begin our new life together in 10 weeks (from tomorrow)! After Lance and I started planning our first race together and he put together the hardest training program ever, we began preparation for the Atlanta marathon on Thanksgiving day.  Lance added 2 extra runs to this training program, a trail marathon and a 50K and did great at both.  We trained harder than either of us had ever trained before for Atlanta, and we were so confident for the Atlanta marathon.  After our first 20 mile run, I begin to worry a little.  I started aching worse than ever, in my right hip.  I tried to not let it bother me, but the pain got worse and worse.  In Atlanta, we started off strong and crashed later. Lance and I both finished in pain and learned that it would be best if we didn't run any marathons together in the future.  Lance starts out faster than me, and I finish faster than he does.  After Atlanta, I was ready to redeem my time, so Lance and I registered for the Mercedes marathon on Valentines Day, 2010.  We took some time off before we started training, and I had no idea what was in store on our first training run. Lance and I went for a 10 mile run to begin Mercedes training. After I finished, I knew something was wrong.  I don't make appointments with the orthopedic doctor unless I'm hurting very badly, and I knew this was one of those times. I made an appointment with a doctor at the Andrews Orthopedic Clinic in Birmingham for a day I would be in town during Christmas and anxiously awaited for a diagnosis.  The first appointment left me with plenty of hope I would be back out running in no time, the  word "stress fracture" was mentioned, but I didn't sweat it.  The lovely course my 2009 was taking all changed on that second trip to the doctor on December 28 when I found out my marathon days were over.
Lance has decided to take a few weeks off to try and let his plantar fasciitis heal, and has been planning his races for 2010.  I told him I will be very happy for him, but don't be worried if I get jealous... I want to be out there with him, but I have decided I think it is more important to take care of myself now and learn some new things that won't hurt my hip any further than to be having hip replacement surgery in my 40s. I have already been swimming, and I love it. Yesterday, I swam 2500 meters, which is about 1.60 miles.  I've tried pilates which has left me hobbling around from sore abs and legs, but I am always up for a challenge. Of course, I miss not being able to just hop on a treadmill or go out for a run, especially when I see a really big hill I want to run up, and it stinks knowing it's not a temporary thing.  I am glad, though, that I finally had a doctor that cared enough and was concerned enough to send me for an MRI, I am grateful for him.  I've had hip pain for the past 2 years, and have always thought it was due to something else, I can't imagine how awful it would be if I went 2 more years unchecked.  Although that day was heartbreaking, my year definitely comes out wonderful.  This has still been the best year of my life and I consider everything that has happened a blessing. I have loved everyday of this year.  I have the most amazing friends, the sweetest and most loving family, and a fiance that I can't even describe with words- he completes me.  2009 has been wonderful, and I am sure 2010 would only be better.

Lacey's Update

Well, I went back to the doctor today for my scheduled MRI and was expecting OK news. I was prepared for a stress fracture and knowing I could be out of running for a few months, but then I was expecting by late spring to be lacing up my running shoes again.  I had my MRI at noon, they did a scan of my hips and my legs.  After the MRI, I met with my orthopedic doctor.  First, he told me that I had a stress fracture in my femur bone which is the bone that runs from your knee to your hip. The fracture is in the very top part of the bone closest to my hip, then he proceeded to explain to me I also had arthritis in my hip, that's where all the pain in my hip has been coming from.  I can remember before I started training for Boston, the pain that I would feel in my right hip after a run, I thought it was just IT irritation because shortly after the pain began I started having IT issues, but apparently it was the arthritis all this time... And, yes, I am 22 years old with an arthritic hip... SERIOUSLY??
He eased his way into explaining to me that I should give up the marathons, and most of the running all together.  He said running usually helps to prevent arthritis in joints, but if you do get it or already have it and begin running, then it speeds up the process of losing the cartilage in joints and makes the pain worse.  His recommendation was a couple miles at a time a few times a week, after the minimum of 6 weeks that I have to take off to let the stress fracture heal.  I didn't know how to take it at first, I heard what he was saying and understood it all, but never grasped it until a few hours after we left the office.
When I left the doctor's office, my mom and I had some errands to run and one of the errands was going by a running shoe store to get mom a pair of running shoes since she has recently started training to run a 5K.  I realized how I upset I was when I walked into the store.  Any day before today, it was so familiar and like walking into a store of close family members.  Today, I felt like a stranger.  Then, of course seeing all the upcoming race announcements that would normally challenge me and encourage me to register before I left the store just left an empty place in my heart.  I didn't realize until that moment how much running meant to me.  It has almost been like a best friend that I have taken with me through so many hard and easy times in my life.  Runner is an adjective I am most likely to use to describe what Lacey is.  I don't know what lesson I may learn from this, but I can only be eager to find out.  It's kind of scary wondering where I'll go from here, but that is what makes the adventure exciting and challenging.  I have a favorite bible verse that I couldn't resist from almost reciting throughout the day today.  It is Psalm 37:4 and says "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart".  A very dear former pastor of mine shared this with me a few years ago, and it instantly became a prayer.  If you aren't a runner, this all may seem so silly to you, but I'm sure it can relate in another aspect of your life.  I honestly believe I was meant to fall in love with running, without it my life would be so different today.  Finishing my first marathon gave me a since of pride and accomplishment I never thought I would have. Finishing the Boston marathon gave my testimony new meaning and witness of the amazing God we serve.  If it weren't for my passion for running, I would not have met the man I will call my husband in 73 short days.  I believe God gave me the desire to run, and I have been blessed by it. I must be excited to see what the future has in store.  My running shoes may never be laced up again for a marathon, but I will still treasure all the memories they have given me. 

Fractures, Pain, and Inflammation...OH MY!

Well, the title says it all. Lance and I are sedentary. We are finished running for at least a few months, why, you ask.... Lance can barely walk thanks to plantar fasciitis, and I go back to the orthopedic doctor on Monday for an MRI...yep, stress fracture...in my HIP.
Now that I think about it, my hip has been hurting pretty badly for about 3 months. I went to the doctor yesterday thinking I had a pulled hamstring. After a thorough examination, my doctor said I had no muscular problems, but there was a line around my hips/thigh bone on an x-ray and it was very painful anytime he pressed down on the outside of my hip. Monday,we will have a verdict.
Up until today, Lance has been running consistently. He ran 11 miles yesterday, but woke up this morning with severe pain in both feet. After hearing my news yesterday, he has decided to also sit out until his feet heal.
I don't mind the time off, I just wish it wasn't FORCED time off. I am still not sure how I feel about this injury, but if it is a stress fracture, I may be re-thinking marathon running. Maybe I should just bronze my Nike Victorys and stick to the itty bitty 13.1 half marathons. A retirement announcement may be in order, but I'll make that decision later.
Nothing can rain on our parade, though. We are 78 days away from the wedding and my sweet fiance and I are ready for our very first Christmas together! It is such a blessing to spend this special holiday around the people I love the most. Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.

Lately...

Lance and I have been taking some time off from running the past couple of weeks to get ready to start training all over again. We start our new training this week, on Tuesday. We've had enough time off that I don't dread it, it's just not the first thing I am looking forward to :) I am crossing my fingers everything feels nice on that first run, and not too achy. Since the marathon, Lance has been treating his plantar fasciatis and I have been battling left knee and right hip pain. I don't think it's anything new, the hip (which is actually more of my butt) is from my new tight hamstrings that won't go away, and the knee problem can be fixed by my dear, sweet chiropractor. Going to the chiropractor is definitely on my list of favorites. Lance has been treating his feet with tart cherry juice, Bromelain supplements, pineapple, salmon, and some rest. It seems to be working very well. Bromelain is our new favorite supplement, it is a natural anti-inflammatory that is found in the skin of pineapple. Tart cherry juice is something else he researched and is suppossed to help fight inflammation- it is VERY tart, but also a winner.
The new training plan is pretty intense, well at least for Lance. I am going to get in as much as I can, but my goal is to not get too sick of running. This last training wore me out, and I ended up running a marathon with an exhausted body. Who knows, we will see how everything worked out in February :)
Well, Christmas is only 12 days away! I finish up classes with my last final on Tuesday. Lance has everything in place to start collecting data for his research, and the wedding is only 88 days away! In less than three months, we will be married! I can't wait. I was thinking about all the joys and blessings this past year has brought. This time last year, I was getting ready to start training for Boston. I had no idea I would train a little, get injured, barely train, bomb Boston-but still finish!, meet the love of my life, and be planning a wedding that will happen 3 months into the new year. I don't know what I did right, but I am so thankful. 2009 has been a fabulous year, sure there have been hard times and not so fun times, but all the great and wonderful things FAR outweigh the bad. I have been so blessed with this incredible life. I can't wait to see what is in store next for me, and my sweetheart :)

Running Lately

Well, Lance and I have been recovering physically, mentally, and emotionally from the brutal beating Atlanta handed us. We went on our first "real" run yesterday at the Intramural fields, and we ran 3.27 at a 7:38 average pace. It was nice and felt really good to actually run again. Our legs felt good, I was still a little tired. We ran on the IM fields because of the soft grass and we didn't think we need anymore pavement beatings right now. It was very muddy, which I didn't like too much but I lived through it.
Today, Lance and I went to the gym and I ran 7 on the treadmill. Yes, I would much rather run outside but I have a tad bit of a fear, especially right after a marathon, that I will get out 6 or 7 miles and get a really bad pain somewhere and miserably have to hobble back to where I started. But the little run today was nice and I'm ready for the road and outdoors again, even if it is FREEZING!
Lance and I will officially start training for Mercedes on December 14, until then we will just be making sure our legs are fresh, while still getting in some non-training runs. We are excited, and still trying to plan our 2010 races. Right now, we just have Mercedes for sure. It's a little tough to plan for anywhere we need to travel to because I have classes on Friday (GASP!)! I know, it's awful. I haven't had Friday classes in at least 4 semesters, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. But, we are trying to find some other races to cover more of our 50 states marathon tour :) Oh yeah, if I haven't announced this before- Lance and I have set our goal to run 50 marathons in 50 different states. It's kind of hard because we don't want to run 2 or 3 in, say Tennessee, but there are so many fun ones throughout the year Tennessee offers. We have found a lot of fun races that we can't wait to have the opportunity to run. Eventually, we will have the chance to get them all run :) It may take us 20 years, but we have a start. I have 3 states covered and Lance has 2.... The difference: I have checked off Massachusetts, but don't be alarmed- if I requalify I WILL be back to have a rematch on the Hopkinton to Boston course!
Hopefully our posts will get more frequent and exciting in the next couple of weeks, until then we will be resting our legs! Happy Weekend!

Post Marathon Update

Well, it's been 4 days since the torture we went through in Atlanta, and Lance and I are recovering well. I have been hitting the gym pretty hard, and Lance has just about worked through all the deadness and soreness in his legs. We have decided to start our training for Mercedes on the 14th, about 2 weeks from now. We are both so excited to get back into training. It's crazy how you hate and dread those training runs, but the second you don't have to train, you miss them so badly. We also have decided that for Mercedes, although we will train together, we are going to run the marathon individually. We aren't using Garmins, and running with as much simplicity as we can :) We are still planning to do a marathon in Colombus, GA in January as a training run. It's a new marathon, and it's free, so why not? After that, we will taper in preparation for Mercedes. I am excited! I think this is the best I have ever felt 4 days out from running 26.2. I know Lance and I are both ready to hit our goal, we just don't need to run a marathon with the worst elevation and climbs in the country! I am still very bitter towards Atlanta, and it may take awhile for me to get over my hatred, I'm holding a good grudge on this one! Lance put together this elevation map earlier today. It compares the Atlanta elevation with the elevation for Mercedes. Hopefully now you can see why this race almost killed us. We like hills and we like challenges, but this was pure TORTURE! We aren't looking for a flat, easy course, we love elevation changes and have nothing against hills, but once again-Atlanta just sucked!!! Ok, enough blasting Atlanta, here's the elevation map, Atlanta is on the top, and Mercedes is on the bottom... Ouch! Doesn't it make your legs hurt just looking at it ?!?!

Atlanta Marathon Race Review

Lances' Recap:
After putting in numerous hours and miles of training, Lacey and I thought we were as ready as anyone could be for the Atlanta Marathon. We had talked with people that had run parts of the course, read all about the course, and knew that is was hilly and definitely not a flat course. With all the training though, we constantly had hills in every run and thought that training in Auburn would be more than adequate for Atlanta. Even with significant preparation, a marathon is not necessarily a race that you want to make more challenging. Just running 26.2 miles can, and as we found- out a constantly changing terrain, really punish the body.

We woke up race day morning and felt wonderful and were full with excitement and anticipation. The weather was ideal for a marathon, with temperatures not expected to be above 55 for the entirety of the race. The plan was to maintain 8:00 / mile pace for the first 22 or so miles and then see how we felt and try to turn it on at the end. This goal, which we thought was easily attainable based on how the training had gone, would easily qualify Lacey for the Boston Marathon with a 3:30 (she has to run under a 3:40 to qualify). In addition, the goal would give me a good hard training run to gauge how much harder I would have to train to qualify myself with a 3:10 in another race.

Well the Atlanta Marathon course had other plans in store for us during the race! The first few miles came and went easily keeping the 8:00 / mile pace, but about 8 miles in Lacey started to slow with some tightness in her hamstrings. This small slip in pace beginning at this point still had us well within qualifying her for Boston and at the half split (13.1 miles) we were at an 8:07 / mile pace. That’s when I began to realize that I had done some serious damage to my body with the constant up and down that the course had already thrown at us and now we had to turn around and do it all over again (Atlanta is an out and back course). My quads were completely gone and were no longer providing any cushion with each step we took. This was something that had never happened in our training runs regardless of the hills we took in Auburn so I knew a sub 3:30 was probably out of the question but I still figured I could hold on. With a water stop around mile 16, I was still running well and in order to try and work some stiffness out of my legs I gave it a good kick and sped up to pick up water for both Lacey and me. I was hoping that this little burst would help reawaken my dead quads.

That last kick lasted until mile 18 when Lacey looked over at me, thinking she was slowing me down, and saw that I was struggling just as bad if not worse. At this point of the race, I did not think my body was going to allow me to finish. Every step was filled with jarring pain in my knees due to the quads not being able to act as my shock absorbers. We tried not to slow but with every look down at the watch it began more and more obvious we were slowing dramatically. I felt so awful because I was supposed to be the stronger of the two of us and should be able to push the pace to keep us both going to ensure Lacey qualified for Boston. I had nothing, though, and told Lacey to go on without me and that I would just finish as soon as I could. Running on less than fumes with pain in every step, I finally made it to the finish line in 4:29:01 (Lacey finished in 4:19:16). By far the worst race day performance for either one of us and ultimately rather humbling. A marathon is not easy but both Lacey and I determined to keep running them and enjoying the fact that we are capable of even attempting such a demanding physical activity. One day, we will run Boston together and look back on the Atlanta race as something that helped make us better and even more determined runners.

Now we are already looking forward to the next one. Last night, we signed up for the Mercedes Marathon that is run on Valentine’s Day 2010 in Birmingham AL. We will get back to training in a week or two after our bodies had recovered sufficiently from the beating Atlanta gave us. We both know we are better runners than the times at Atlanta indicate, and we are more determined than ever to run the best race of our lives that we both still know is inside us! Only 77 more days until the next opportunity.

Lacey's Recap:
Lance said it best and professionally, I'll sum it in my non-professionalization up with this: ATLANTA SUCKED! It was the hardest race I have ever run in my life. Lance and I trained so hard and put so much time and effort into a strict training plan, and I know we were ready. We just got a marathon thrown at us that we did not expect. I guess we figured since Atlanta is so close to Auburn and it's not in a mountainous region, that it could not be as hilly as everyone said it was... well, we were wrong! It was so hilly! We passed out hotel between 17 and 18 and I seriously considered bailing on the course and heading back to the room, but I knew Lance wouldn't let me, and I am NOT a quitter! When, Lance and I both crashed around mile 18, we did have a pretty good time at first. We were laughing with all the volunteers at our run/limp/hop groove we were in. Then, around 23 it wasn't funny anymore, the pain was SEVERE. Every step felt like knives stabbing in my hamstrings, butt, back, and feet. OUCH! I wondered for a few miles, why I like to run these crazy races, but as soon as I crossed the finish line I remembered why. I run because I have the ability, health, and determination to push myself to new extremes and it makes me stronger everytime. Running gets me through things that nothing else can, and without it I would not be the Lacey who I am, and I would not have the amazing fiance I have either. Running has worked pretty well for me :)

The constant demand of pushing up hills is still exerting it's effect on Lance and I. Just come watch me attempt to walk, and you will understand, those hills were not for sissies :) Lance and I were planning on going back to Atlanta every Thanksgiving and running this race again, since it was our first race together, but I think we have decided Thanksgiving will be spent with families, and we can just leave it to ourselves to get a run in that day :) It was very humbling, and I do believe it made us stronger. We WILL hit our 3:30 goal. One thing that is different about this race from all the others is that the second after I finished I was ready to run another marathon. I knew it would need to be a couple of months, but I can't wait to cross my next finish line. There could not be a more perfect next race for us than the Mercedes Marathon on Valentines Day. I'm excited! I ran the half last year and didn't think the hills were too daunting. Lance and I are tossing our Garmins for that one and just running by how we feel- this is how I ran Memphis and finished in 3:35:42, so I think it works well. I'm just thankful we are both such healthy and dedicated individuals who both have this crazy obsession with running. Yeah, I admit we may have something loose in our noggins, but I wouldn't have it any other way :)