Walking on Sunshine

Or should I say, RUNNING on sunshine!

On Wednesday I had an appointment with my PT for my hamstring. I told him about my foot and he did some poking and prodding and said he thought it was probably tibial tendonitis. Which is what I thought it was before I went to the doctor. He told me to ice it, do some toe abc's, and he taped it up to simulate an orthotic to see if getting one would help.

I did zumba on Thursday with basically no pain, so today I laced up my brand new Brooks and got on the treadmill. I was nervous because I hadn't run in 2 weeks, which is the longest I have gone without running since I started. I went really slow and waited for the pain to set in. It never did! I did 3 beautiful miles with no foot pain! I was ECSTATIC! After the run, I had some minor pain but definitely nothing like it used to be. I am supposed to call both my doctor and my PT on Monday to update them on how my run went. Hopefully they give me the greenlight to get an orthotic and keep running.

I can't tell you how relieved I am. A navicular stress fracture could have meant up to 6 months before returning to normal activity. Based on what my PT said, I can start running again right now and gradually increase to where I was over the next few weeks. That sounds a lot better to me!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend too!

The Food Post

Since I can't run right now, I don't have anything running related to talk about. So, I will talk about the other half of my blog - food. On our recent vacation to California we did quite a lot of damage...3-4 lbs worth :) I am just about back to where I was already so it was definitely worth it! Below are some favorites...


Three Twins Ice Cream
Midnight Cookie (chocolate with thin mints), Chocolate Orange, and Mint Confetti (mint with chocolate bits). So good! After we got back I found out they are carried in Whole Foods and New Seasons markets so I am set :)


Morimoto Napa
Sushi! At Iron Chef Morimoto's restaurant! I got my usual California roll, shrimp tempura roll, and soft shell crab roll. It was delicious, melts in your mouth.


In and Out
I must confess...I only got a fountain soda. We were looking forward to going here, but when we got there I remembered why I never really cared for it before. All the food looks so greasy. So a diet coke it was!


Gotts Roadside
Delicious! Cheeseburger and fries. One of my favorite meals of the trip, we went here twice. I don't eat a lot of red meat, maybe twice a year, but this was one of the best burgers I have ever had. Hubby went with a healthier version, Ahi tuna burger and sweet potato fries. He had rave reviews as well.


Ghiradelli Cafe
Gold Rush Sundae - ice cream, Ghirardelli hot fudge, and peanut butter. It was in the 70s that day and this was the perfect treat to cool off.


Yank Sing
Dim Sum! We focused on our favorites - steamed pork buns, shrimp shumai, and pot stickers. SO GOOD. No wonder it is hubby's favorite Dim Sum place he has ever been to.


Kara's Cupcakes
We shared a "cupcake flight" back at the hotel. Red velvet, sweet vanilla, meyer lemony lemon, and carrot cake. Our favorites were the carrot cake and vanilla. We don't really get the deal about red velvet.


Chick Fil A
At last! This is one place we really miss from living in Virginia. Chargrilled chicken sandwich and waffle fries, mmmm.


Ghiradelli Cafe
Colossal chocolate chip cookie. I have had a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my life, and this was one of the best. It was so big, that it was like a cookie within a cookie. The inside cookie was perfectly undercooked and tasted like cookie dough, and the outside cookie was perfectly done. It was so big I got sugar sick before I finished, and had to throw the last few bites away. I was so sad :(

There are a few other great places we went to that I didn't get pictures of. We are going again in May though, so I can do Part 2 then :)

Throwing in the Towel

I finally went to the doctor to get my foot/ankle checked out since the pain refused to go away. Three x-rays and a few pokes and prods later, I got a little bad news.

Strained spring ligament.

And then I got some worse news.

Possible stress reaction/stress fracture in the navicular bone.

My options are to A) get an MRI to confirm/rule out stress reaction/fracture (which would cost $200-$300), or B) see a PT that specializes in running and continue to train for the race.

As I have mentioned before, I can be somewhat stubborn when it comes to running. It is hard to decide on my own to take a break, when no one is telling me I have to.

I have thought and thought and thought about what to do. I remember my first half-marathon, when I didn't fuel right and bonked half-way through. I was so disappointed crossing the finish line because I had such a bad race. I couldn't even celebrate the fact that I had just run a half-marathon. I don't want that to happen again at my first marathon.

So, I have decided to skip the race. In addition to not wanting to have a bad first race, the treatment for a navicular stress fracture is 6-8 weeks in a boot, while the treatment for a navicular stress reaction is 2 weeks of weight-bearing rest. I think the latter sounds a LOT better.

This is the first weekend since November that I haven't done a long run. I already miss it. Ugh. Hopefully, after 2 weeks things will feel better. The doctor said I can still do Zumba if there isn't jumping involved, so I plan on doing Zumba two days a week and strength training two days a week to keep up my fitness somewhat.

Over the last 2 years, the longest I have gone without running is 5 days. I think I am going to go a little crazy. And now I can't eat pizza and chocolate and ice cream in large amounts! Sigh. What's a girl to do?

Back From Vacation

Sadly vacation had to come to an end :( At least now I can get caught up on my running blogs! And do a few vacation-related posts. This post will be about my vacation runs. Then I'll get to all the food ;)

I was pretty happy that I got in 4 runs during vacation, for a total of 28.5 miles. I think that is my highest mileage week to date.

Run #1 - Sunday - 15 miles

We left for vacation on Saturday, driving 5 hours and stopping at a hotel for the night. (Our total drive was about 10 hours.) I had a long run scheduled so I called ahead to make sure the hotel had a treadmill :) Due to my serious addiction to hotel breakfast buffets, I had to get up at 4am to finish my run, shower, and hit the hotel breakfast before it closed. I have been doing a run/walk thing for my last few runs since my ankle is not 100% better yet, so I would run 5 minutes, walk 1 minute. The whole thing took about 3 hours. I was ready to be done around mile 12-13, but having walk breaks really helped.

Ready to run at 4am!

Run #2 - Tuesday - 5 miles

We stayed on an Air Force Base for vacation and I didn't know anywhere good to run outside, so I went with my husband to the gym and did my run on the treadmill while he lifted weights. My ankle was feeling good so I only walked for a minute after 2 miles and 4 miles. I also watched The View for the first time in at least 5 years. It was kind of entertaining.

Run #3 - Wednesday - 3.5 miles

Since we were in beautiful northern California I was determined to run outside at least once, so I ventured out to just run around the few blocks of the base that I had become familiar with. Unfortunately there were 20mph+ wind gusts that morning that were blowing me sideways. I ran 1.5 miles and stopped at the gym to say hi to hubby, then I set out for a few more miles. I had hoped for 4-5, but the wind was killer and my ankle was hurting some from running on pavement so I called it quits at 3.5. Solid effort though.

Run #4 - Friday - 5 miles

Best run of the trip! I woke up and found a note from hubby that he had gone to the gym, but he called within a few minutes to see if I wanted him to run with me. Of course I did! I got dressed and drove over to the gym to meet him. He had picked up a map of running routes at the gym and we made our way over to a duck pond, which had an awesome running path about 1.5 miles long that went around it. The path was kind of sandy, and had some hills to keep it interesting. It was a gorgeous morning, definitely my favorite run the whole week. And, my ankle didn't really hurt at all and I ran the whole 5 miles without having to walk! I wish we had discovered that path the first day! We agreed next time we would run that path every morning.

In total I got in 28.5 miles of running, and lots of walking. We were half-way between San Francisco and Napa, so we spent a few hours on our feet every day. One of my favorite vacations ever!

My No Excuses Run

I had a lot excuses why I should skip my run today.

I am on vacation.
We are staying in a hotel.
I got about 2 hours of sleep.
I am still coming back from my ankle injury and would have to take walk breaks, which means it would take a LONG time to do 15 miles.
The breakfast buffet closes at 9:30am so I would have to finish by 8:30 or 9 if I wanted to go, and I love breakfast buffets.

When my alarm went off at 4am I did have a moment of hesitation. But I knew how much I would regret it if I slept in. So I got up, ate my power bar, got dressed, and ran 15 miles in the hotel fitness center. Then I ate a delicious breakfast buffet including a PB&J bagel, chocolate muffin, sausage, and hash browns. I 100% do not regret my decision to get up at 4am on my first day of vacation and spend 3 hours of my morning running.

You always regret the workout you skipped. You rarely regret the workout you do.

No excuses!