Let's do this!

With a hurt back my posts this week shall be boring. I don't blame you if you stop checking up on me. I'd be sad if eventually I fell off everyone's maps but....

 1 hr 45 min eliptical hell. Since I was not running I have a little more freedom to look around and observe. Oh boy the things I have observed!!!!!

 Lifted for 10 and worked core.

1 hr 40 min eliptical. My back/rear hurts and I am not happy about this. Everything I do hurts, not just my exercise regime. 

Observances this morning: 1.more people like to run rather than elipitcal. At least at our gym. So because it's the new year, when peak time hits for people to arrive, the treadmills all get swallowed up or were already being used. So I noticed a lot of people come in and walk around looking for an empty one that doesn't exist. Thus this is the reason why I dislike the new year. To many gerbil's trying to run on the caged wheel. I also love summer for this reason. I don't have to feel like a caged gerbil. I can come in and lift then I leave back home to run on my beautiful river trail.

2. Some people look so gross when they come in. Come on! Is is that hard to brush your hair neatly and rinse your face? How about a 1 min tooth scrubbing for crying out loud? It's not that hard!

3. I use my jacket or long sleeve shirt to 'save' the eliptical on my right so that Mr. Albright (he was my teacher in high school) doesn't eliptical hell near me. He clears his throat loudly every 10 seconds and I CANNOT STAND IT! I saved it for no one and he knows it ha!

Roy the meat head taught me a few new stretches for my hurt lower buck/buns. I thought that was nice of him. He might be a meat head but he is sure kind and helpful to me.

I decided after a really painful day yesterday that I am not going to run or exercise for awhile. I was in a ton of pain last night before bed. I think I may have piriformis syndrome. Either it's that or a herniated disc. I'm not a Doctor so I am not not necessarily going to walk around self diagnosing. So, not good, not good for Lily at all.

So, I am not running and no more eliptical hell for awhile until I improve. Who know's how long it will be. In the meantime I will still go to the gym and lift a couple times this week and next. I lifted yesterday and it actually felt a little better when I was done.

 So I will try to keep my blog interesting until I am back up and running. So I'll write about how and why I started running.

In the fall of 2002 my husband started school full time at the University of Utah. A couple months before, I quit my full time job as a Quality Control inspector for an aerospace company, where I had worked for 5 years. I became a stay at home Mom and my husband was gone all day long. Were talking we saw him maybe an hour a day?! It sucked. So, I felt a little trapped in the house. Randomly this one day, I decided to get a gym membership so I could get a little exercise in early in the mornings before he left. And I won't lie, it was a way to get a little 'me time'. I started waking at 5 am and getting to the gym. I had run a sub 6:30 min mile earlier in my teen years so I knew the ability was inside me somewhere. It started with a walk/jog for a couple months. By 3 months I was into a full run. The gym had a underground oval track so I got off the TM and onto the track. This was funny because there seemed to be a lot of old timers down there and I whipped past them and always got a lot of funny comments like: 'I used to be young dish like you once' and 'I marvel watching you'. LOL! Things that made me laugh.  I do have one particular bad memory of that track even to this day. This isn't anything to laugh over either, but, I was inappropriately harassed by  the Orem City Fire chief on that track one Saturday afternoon. It was a bad experience. I think he was suspended from his job for awhile as punishment because he was down there running on city time and being inappropriate. Bad memories, so anyways!

I just remember that I quickly began to have a love for running from those beginnings. I felt free and happy. I felt so good when I got home. I know it has made me a better Mom and wife because of it. That next spring (spring 2003) I began running outside in my neighborhood every morning and that was so fun. I lived in Orem and it's bigger and busier and so I saw a lot of people, and found a couple running friends. I got faster and faster and consequently, thinner and thinner.

Also at this time I would do 4x800's with the Mountain View High School Track team. The track coach was super awesome to me and didn't mind letting me work out with them. I would actually join them on their school track just to the west of the gym. (walking distance away). I really believe that helped me a lot as well.  I got pretty good in those workouts,

I also did a lot of running up the Provo Canyon trail. I lived about 1 mile away from the parking lot near the gas station where it starts. On Saturdays I would wake up around 6:30 and get to the trail by 7 and run up that (along with everybody else in  Orem/Provo ha!). It was good for me to do that and I got really strong running up and down that trail. I met a few good people on that trail that spring and summer.

Summer of 2004 I ran my very first race. It was just a dinky 5k. Orem City Firemen's run. It was so fun! I did okay, but I didn't know how to race back then. Later that summer I ran the Provo River Trail 1/2 and did a 1:36. I didn't know what I was doing then either LOL. However that is still a great 1/2 time.  By this summer I was really really thin and fit. I weight trained with my good friend Kim, who was a 1st place winning body builder. She taught me a ton of stuff. By the fall of that year, my husband and I knew it was time to have another baby. My 2 boys were 5 and 3 1/2. So I tried to get prego and nothing happened for like 5 months. Now you have to understand I am a FERTILE FAIRY. Holy moly it is no lie! So for me to not get pregnant very quick, we thought that was odd. I went to the Dr.  The conclusion was that I was running to much, and my body fat was to low to ovulate properly.  So I toned down the running. Guess what?  30 days later I got pregnant with my now only Daughter Maile. :)  I only gained 17 lbs when I was pregnant with her, because I throw up a lot.

I still eliptical helled my life away when I was prego though. So I had good fitness when I started running again after her birth.

Got to the gym at 5:50 and lifted today. That's it. I worked nearly every part of my body.

Back to my running history:

I got pregnant January 2005 and I was so sick I couldn't do much of anything. So, no running during the first part of my pregnancy. I am the kind of girl that pukes all day long when I am prego, so I don't really lead a normal life during that time. When I finally felt better, I tried running a little bit, but I just felt awkward running with a small kickball in front of me. So I was a quitter. Yep, I eliptical helled my life away for the remaining 5 months. It was good because it helped me stay in shape and keep a decent level of fitness.

After she was born, I was back at the gym in 4 weeks. I attempted a slow run my first day back. Buuuuut...  I left feeling like someone kicked me in the pelvis. So I took it slow. I built back up into a fast run within about 5 months. By the end of the spring of 2006 I was back into a fast pace and running strong everyday -and back outdoors.

We built a home and moved to S.F. In October of 2006. This is where my love for the Spanish Fields river trail began.  It is about 1/2 mile from my home. I began running on it in the Spring of 2007........ah oh! Just in time to have a tiny little 'accident' again. Baby Brooks! Oh dear, he was a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting to have another baby so quick. So this is where it gets hairy. I got really lazy when I was prego with Brooks. So no running really at all the whole 9 months. It felt kind of good to have a break from my ultra fast paced workouts and healthy eating. Weeell, I took it to the max. I ate bad, was a tad lazy, stopped lifting and whatdya know? I gained 35 lbs. The most I ever gained pregnant.

He was Born November 07', the day before Thanksgiving. I ate turkey Dinner in the hospital. I had hardly any visitors. My family couldn't come back because my 2nd oldest got sick with a stomach virus. Plus it was a Holiday. Nobody wants to break away from their good time to visit little old me. It was tough being in the hospital alone those two days.

After I got home and for the next 4 weeks trying to adjust to being Mom of 4. It was hard. But I was determined to get back to running. So I started going maybe 3 days a week.  But.......I hit a huge scary wall about a week later.

One night something happened to me. I got one of the worst headaches I've ever had. I took some pain meds and went to sleep. Around 3:30 am I woke up with the weirdest sensation going on in my brain. I sat up and had a major panic attack. I didn't sleep the rest of the night. As the sun came up that morning, I couldn't see very well. Bright lights were hurting my brain. I couldn't concentrate or focus on much. I had several other panic attacks throughout the day. Ended up calling my husband to come home. Sister came and spent a week helping me at home with kids- house.. whatnot. Long story short, aside from the weird head/brain issues, and the eyesight change, and the concentration problems, I ended up with a pretty severe case of postpartum anxiety and depression. It was a monster machine that sucked me in, chewed me up and spit me out dry. I was a mess for about a year.  So running was very minimal. I didn't sleep much for about a year. Probably 3-4 hours a night. And all the stress of 4 kids, oh man, it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. I was in a downward spiral and no way to get out of it.

This is where my friend Julie from the blog comes in.That girl saved me in a way. We became friends and I told her one day I was suffering with postpartum depression/anxiety and whatdya know? -She had gone through it herself just 3 years prior. She helped me so much just by validating my feelings and my experiences. I got on some anti-anxiety meds and began sleeping through the night. And Julie helped encourage me back into a regular running regime.

It took a lot of work! I was out of shape. Totally tired and drained. But I persisted getting up early again and running. For about 5 months I fought off the voices of doubt in my head. -that I would never run well again, or sleep on my own again, or feel normal again. This seriously pushed me into the mentality I now have. I am now the most determined individual. If you tell me I won't be able to do something, I switch into a totally different mindset. Kind of feisty like. In my head I think: "Oh yeah? You don't think I can hack it???  TRY ME 

Did you notice I hadn't run a race since 2004? Here I was in 2009 still raceless for 5 years. Well Merri worked me over and convinced me to run the local city race July 09'. Unfortunately, tho I was super prepared, I sprained my ankle 2 days before. It sucked, I cried so much. I wanted to run that race . I decided not to let it stop me, and I ran it with a fresh sprain anyways. I ended up in 2nd plc age division behind Merri. The awesome race feeling was back!

I think that's enough today. This is making me laugh. It's like writting a book .

1 hr lifting with Roy and 45 minutes eliptical. I probably should not have worked on the eliptical because afterwards my piriformis was acting up a bit. 

Rolled my hurt muscle with the foam roller on the gym floor. 

Sadness