I'm back in the game...mostly

My official post-Goofy Challenge debut to running was supposed to be yesterday.

Yesterday was our "Kick-Off" for Team in Training summer season.  This is the first official practice of the season where all the teams (hike, cycle, triathlon, marathon) join together to celebrate being on the team and listen to lots of thanks you's from LLS staff members.  Then we all (runners/walkers, some hike and tri people) go for our first run together.

I was especially excited for this particular Kick-Off because I somehow convinced--after they expressed interest of course--two of my co-worker running clubbers, Natalie and Stephanie, to jump on my crazy-wagon.  And by "jump on my crazy-wagon," I mean join Team in Training, fundraise for LLS, and train for a half or full marathon.

Even though we run together most Thursdays, I was super excited to run with these ladies on their first official TNT Saturday run.

The night they signed their lives away...how can you say no when Candy
Cane Lane is involved?

But, alas, life would not have it.  As I woke up Saturday morning to head to Kick-Off, it wasn't running clothes I donned.  My running tights had to wait yet another day on the "dirty but still wearable hook" in my closet (don't judge).  My new pretty green Brooks had to sit sadly by the door again.  Instead, I pulled on some jeans and a pair of worn-out running shoes (I felt I had to at least feel like a runner) and walked out the door.  No watch.  No new snazzy RoadID (birthday present courtesy of Erica).  No hat to keep the rain out of my eyes.  Just clothes.

Why, you may ask?  Why, after a solid, steady, self-enforced 2 week running hiatus did I have to walk slowly for yet another day?  Well, because I had a golf ball in my throat.  A golf ball covered in sand-paper.

Well...not literally...but it felt like that.  It felt like someone had taken my left tonsil out and replaced it with a sand-papery, pain-filled, golf ball.

It started Wednesday morning with a slight soreness in the back of my throat.  No big deal.  I could ignore that.  Then I woke up Thursday morning and it kind of hurt to swallow.  So I downed some ibuprofen, repeated that action every 4 hours throughout the day, and made it to 3:20 to get the kids on the buses.  With the adrenaline rush of the day gone, but still a long evening to look ahead to (we had a meeting at school at until 7:30 that night, and because I commute so far I don't go home between school hours and late meetings), I could feel my tonsil growing, expanding down to touch my tongue.  I went with a couple co-workers to happy hour to fill the time and drank hot tea to soothe the throat.  But it wasn't feeling so good.

So when I got back to school, I talked with my office manager and we decided to go ahead and call a sub for the next day--maybe I should go to a doctor since I found it impossible to swallow without wincing.  

I woke up the next morning, managed to snag myself an 8:45 doctor's appointment, and got in with little waiting.  After answering the typical questions, the doctor asked me to open wide, took a quick look inside and responded with something that amounted to "ew--oh, uh, hmm."  He immediately walked out the door to grab a strep throat test and was blown away when it came back negative.  Then, as he sat thinking, he said "well, the only other thing that can make a throat look like that in your age group is mono."  Mono.  Lovely.

So the nurse took a blood draw, and they shuffled me out the door with a prescription for 10 days worth of Penicillin saying, "you might hear from us tomorrow, but by Monday afternoon at the latest."  Great.  So I have to just wait it out to see if I have mono??  This is fun.

I went straight to the grocery store, picked up 3 different kinds of soup and the fixings for a 4th, 2 pints of Ben and Jerry's, a box of strawberry popsicles, and 2 boxes of Throat Coat tea.  The only things I could fathom swallowing at the time.  I did nothing but cuddle on the couch with my Lucy dog for the rest of the day.

I'm not an ice cream person.  I have never in my life bought a pint of Ben and
Jerry's.  My throat hurt that bad.

I was determined, however, not to miss Kick-Off.  So Saturday morning I went and tried to keep a fairly large bubble around myself, not touch people, and tried to keep my painful, unavoidable coughs heartily covered in my sleeve.  Then, just before the celebrations officially began, I got the call from the doctor's office: NO MONO!!!  Thank you Northgate Sports Medicine Clinic for being so quick with my test results.

I celebrated by waiting around while almost everybody else ran, drinking tea, trying to swallow a cupcake, and air high-fiving people as they came back from the run.  Then I was so exhausted I had to go home and take a long nap.  After that, I made it through the entire 2nd season of New Girl and the first few episodes of the 2nd season of Once Upon a Time before falling asleep again.

Just a few of the summer team crew.  Yep, Movin 92.5 was there to celebrate
with us.  We're that cool.

Yay, they finished their first run of the season! I did not.

This morning, I woke up with a mostly-feeling-better throat.  The antibiotics have kicked in, taken the pain away, and left very nasty metallic taste in my mouth, which I'm crossing my fingers doesn't last for the next 8 days as I finish off the dose.  I'm also hoping that the phlegmy, unpleasant cough I've had for a month is associated with all this and will be kicked to the curb by the end of these metallic mouthed days.

And of course, when I woke up feeling good again, I thought to myself man, I really miss Green Lake.  As sick as I get of Green Lake when I'm training, I hadn't seen it's brackish waters in almost 3 weeks and it seemed to be calling my name.  But I wanted to be good, to rest my sickly body, to be a smart person and take just one more day off.  So I leashed Lucy up and we took a nice, steady walk around the lake.  I plugged in my earphones, finished up my audiobook (if you haven't read Divergent and are a Hunger Games type fan, it's a MUST READ), and tried to fend off thoughts off it would be some much more awesome if I was running right now. 

Instead I tried to think, good job being all smart and stuff and choosing not to run today.  And then, when I was about 3/4 of the way around, patting myself on the back while gritting my teeth with wanting-to-run anxiety, Erica texted me:

I obviously needed A LOT of convincing to say yes.

Two o'clock rolled around, I pulled my running tights off the "dirty but still wearable" hook, threw on my Mickey Marathon shirt, a rain jacket, my new Goofy Challenge hat, and Erica and I took off out the door.

And for the first 2 miles I felt great.  Erica and I hadn't had a real chance to catch up on life since Goofy, so we chatted away as we typically do.  By the 3rd mile I was feeling pretty winded, and there was no way I was running back up the Phinney hill, so we walked it instead.  When I got home, I looked at our splits:

After 2 weeks off, and still a little sick, I'd call this killing it.

There was absolutely no reason for us to run that fast.  I didn't expect to go under 9:00 for my first few runs back.  But when you're feeling good, chatting with a good friend, and enjoying being out there running, it's hard not to go fast.  And it's hard not to smile looking at those numbers.

So, I'm officially calling it:  I'm back in the game.  Seattle Rock N Roll Marathon, sub-4 hour marathon, here I come.