Long Time, No Post...And a Quick Army Ten Miler Recap

Hello everyone!  I hope this post is the start of my return to the blog world.  I have been MIA for a few weeks now, and I apologize.  In addition to being quite busy, I have to admit that I have also been staying away because of a small case of running depression.  Let me fill you in...
 
I have been having a lot of pain in my lower back recently, so I took a little time off to let it heal.  All seemed to be going well, so I did two short (about 3 miles each) runs during the week leading up to the Army Ten Miler on October 24th.  Both runs were great...no pain during or after...so I thought I was good to go.  My PT also agreed that whatever was causing the pain, most likely my degenerative discs, had calmed down and I was back to normal.  This made me so happy because I had been looking forward to this race for months.  My lovely friend, Megan, asked me if I would like to take her husband's bib.  He is in the Army, and they knew when they registered that there would be a chance that he wouldn't be around on race weekend.  That turned out to be the case, so I was lucky enough to get the chance to transfer in to the sold out race. 

Eek!  The excitement! (I'm WAY in the back!)

Race day comes and I'm feeling great.  Megan and I set out at a decent pace and we were passing folks right and left for the first 4 miles.  And then it happened...a small twinge of pain in my lower back.  It was just a passing pain, so I had high hopes that it wouldn't come back and we could keep it up.  By mile 5, I knew this wasn't the case.  It had come back a few more times over that mile and I just knew it was going to keep getting worse.  At mile 5, I told Megan to go on without me and I was going to stop and walk for bit to access the situation.  I walked for just a minute or two and the pain was gone, so I tried to pick it up again.  I made it to the 6 mile mark and decided to stop again and walk through the water stop.  By this point, I knew that running the rest of the race was not going to happen.  The only way I could finish was if I added in the walking breaks to give my back a rest.  At first I hoped I could run a mile, and then walk for a minute or two...that seemed like it would work, but it only lasted one cycle.  It was then, run half a mile and walk a bit.  This worked until I hit mile 9.  At this point, I was hurting A LOT.  The walking only gave me a slight break in the pain.  I probably did more walking than running for that last mile.  I'm sure the pain was evident on my face; it took everything I had not to just stop and cry. (Pathetic, I know.)  Then I heard someone say, "The finish like is just around the curve."  I refused to walk across the finish line, so I just told myself to suck it up and give it everything I had to run across the finish line.

So, I did complete the Army Ten Miler.  I finished in 1:56:17.  Definitely not a great time, but considering all the time I had to take off leading up to the race and the insane pain I was feeling during the race, I'm ok with it.  Despite all the pain and discomfort, I really enjoyed this race.  My mom was there to support me, I got to spend time with one of my best friends, the race atmosphere was incredible, and I was wearing a super cute camo skirt (Sorry, I don't have any photos...security was tight, so I didn't mess with taking a camera).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can fix whatever it is that seems to be broken with me and run this race again next year.

I think that is enough for now.  I will wait until the next post to give you the low down on what has happened since the race.  I'll give you a small hint...there hasn't been any running...thus my depression.  Ugh.