A Trip to the ER

Well friends, I woke up Friday morning contemplating whether or not I should run 8 miles the day before a 10K, decided against it, and "slept in", planning on going to yoga at 9:30. I dozed off and accidentally woke up at 9:20, too late to get to yoga in time, so instead I laid in bed for about an hour reading up on blogs and answering e-mails.

Around 10:45, I finally got up and got ready for a lazy Friday - I went upstairs, started the Keurig, and grabbed a frozen English muffin from the freezer. I repeated what I had done for two days in a row- I needed to cut the muffin in half so I could put it in the toaster oven to make my egg sandwich. Well, instead of putting the muffin on its side on the counter and cutting it in half that way like I had been doing, I decided to hold it above the sink and cut around it...

With the title of this post, you can see where I'm going with this. As soon as I got the muffin cut all the way through, the knife went through the muffin and swiftly met my thumb. Well then! I felt a little silly going downstairs and waking up JW to tell him that I had cut my thumb trying to cut a muffin, but when I told him, he immediately jumped up and said, "OK, let's go," - so we immediately went to the emergency room.

Long story short, I was there for about two hours - two of the longest hours of my life, honestly (so much crying and pain!) - and I got six stitches in my left thumb, which was numb for the rest of the day, along with a tetanus shot. While the doctor was stitching me up, I mentioned that I was supposed to run a 10K the next day, and he said that I probably still could, but that I would be really sore if I went through with it. It wasn't looking good.

The day went on, and I ate an entire CPK pepperoni pizza, watched Harry Potter, took a nap for 2 hours, ate some tacos, and made a deep-dish cookie pie. (You could say I'm an emotional eater....) I went ahead and set my alarm for 6am for the next morning, but because of our mid-day nap, we didn't go to bed until 2am, so it wasn't looking good.

Sure enough, 6am came and I made the decision to skip the race in about 2 seconds as I went back to sleep.

It's the first time I've ever signed up for a race and skipped it, and it's a weird feeling - I feel like I wasted money, wasted a workout, and carbo-loaded for nothing. I'm really bummed about it. I feel like my whole half marathon training has been thrown off. I signed up for this race in mid-February, which is why I was registered in my maiden name, but this experience has definitely deterred me from ever signing up early for a race again.

For the rest of Saturday, I had to host a Dinner Detective show. I usually don't have the most nutritious things there: along with the chicken and mashed potato dinner, I had some chocolate cake and two glasses of wine. 

backstage at Dinner Detective

I wanted to run 13 miles on Sunday morning to redeem myself (and it was technically on my half marathon plan), but because of my thumb, I can't really get dressed by myself. Needing to wake up JW to help me get dressed so early in the morning for a workout that was basically guaranteed to bring me more pain equaled me just going back to sleep and not running. Just like half of last week's runs. Womp womp.

For Sunday brunch, JW and I met my cousin and aunt, who are visiting, for brunch at Portage Bay Cafe. It was DELICIOUS and had an amazing breakfast bar (pictured above), which I piled on top of my pancakes and JW piled on top of his french toast. This wasn't exactly the healthiest breakfast....

Portage Bay Cafe, picture taken by my cousin!

From all the eating and no running, I've gained about 4 pounds since Friday morning... which is inSANE. I'm trying to not think about how badly I've been eating and not working out, but it's hard to not notice when I just feel sluggish because of it. Plus, I'm in pain which doesn't help at all.

Last year around this time, I was in the thick of training for the Nike Women's Marathon as well as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels rehearsals. I was setting goals, making them, and barely skipping any training runs. I broke my marathon goal, my half marathon goal, and my 5K goal, all in the span of a month. I felt AWESOME.

This year, I'm not sure how the Bellingham Bay Half Marathon is going to go, considering how training is going now and how slow I am. There's no marathon to train for. We've also decided we're not going back to Dallas for Thanksgiving (my in-laws are coming up here instead), so we won't be running the Turkey Trot. So what goals do I have? What's next?

Now I'm contemplating whether I should sign up for the Seattle Marathon?? I wonder if it's just because I want the glory of running a difficult race. Would I even beat my time, though? It's 8 weeks after the Bellingham Bay Half - would I be in good training shape? I'm not sure. Everything's up in the air.

SIGH. Clearly these transition periods (getting married, moving into a new house, possibly getting a dog) are really weighing on my training and my mental state. My mind is constantly churning with ideas for things to get for the house and barely on my running fitness... but at the same time, I'm berating myself for not being as "good" as I was last year, fitness-wise (i.e. being fast and weighing less, etc). I recognize that I should probably stop doing that as it's doing nobody any good, but it's hard to not compare yourself to, well, yourself.

Here's to my thumb healing without a giant scar. I would give a thumbs up... but I can't. :)