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. :)

Admission Wednesday: Falling on My Face Twice

I admit... I've kind of forgotten how to write a proper blog post. It's just so easy to put things in bullet points and add some pictures. I mean, honestly I'm not blogging as much because I'm not doing much more than wedding stuff, yoga, and the occasional jog. There's not much to write about when you do the same stuff every day, you know?  

So, sorry in advance, but this post is gonna be all over the place..

Some nice sky shots to get us started.

I admit... I'm getting a little too confident in yoga. I just get in this zone and try things, which I'm sure is encouraged, but I keep getting injured because of it. I'm kind of prone to getting injured since I feel like half of my posts mention me with some kid of injury.

During yoga on Saturday, I ended up pulling a thigh muscle. I think we were doing Wild Thing (basically the link explains it, but instead of a bent leg, it's straight and off the ground), and I was trying to use my core to lift my leg, but my thigh just ended up trying to do most of the work. I spent the next three days stretching it out, before it felt better, as shown here:

Be jealous of my socks.

Yesterday, in Power, I was in Crow pose (sometimes called Crane), and playing around with going from that to Tripod Headstand, where you lower your head slowly and then go into the headstand. Well, I've done it a few times before, but I guess yesterday I was going too fast and I basically slammed the left side of my head into the floor. Neat.

But that's not all. Today, in Power, we were in Dolphin pose, playing around with lifting our legs/torso, hopping, and seeing if we could balance on our forearms in a kind of forearm-stand. I felt a little too confident, hopped up on my first try, and immediately tumbled over my left shoulder, slammed my LIP into the floor, and felt the back of my neck crack. Yeah, it was great. I was okay, but now I have a fat lip. If you can even tell....

Pity me.

 Now the whole left side of my face hurts.

I admit... I wish I was running more. Reasons are twofold: it would make me blog more. It would make me be outside more. I would be generally happier. But alas, because of the aforementioned injuries and a general desire to not run, I haven't been. Though, I do have two runs since the last post!

The first run was completed in desperation on Saturday night, around 9. Even though I had really bad hip pain, I just wanted to clock 3 miles for the week, so I went on the treadmill and pounded it out. It hurt really, really bad.

Hurt enough that I made a note about it!

At least I got negative splits...?

I'm just used to being sweaty and gross now. It's my new normal.

I was happy I got the run over with, but I paid for it the next three days. I didn't run again until this morning, when it was a glorious 56 degrees and partly cloudy. It was glorious!

This run was hard. I was really, really trying to keep the pace - as you can see, I succeeded those first two miles but then that last mile I completely failed at it. At least the overall pace was faster than the pace on the treadmill.

The view wasn't bad.

Sweaty and gross, take 3!

I admit... I love seeing musicals, and I love my friends. I love combining the two. Last Thursday, I went to see my old castmates in A Little Night Music at Second Story Repertory, and it was fantastic. Even though I went alone, I still really enjoyed it. Everyone's voices were exactly where they should be, and really it just blew me away.

On Friday night, we went over to our friend's house to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit- our friends had never seen it before! I was aghast. That movie is awesome. After that, we went to a friend's birthday party at Cowgirls, Inc. and scored a parking spot right in front of the bar. In Seattle, this is nothing short of a miracle!

At Cowgirl's

 Cowgirl's is a bar where you can get up on the bar and dance. I may or may not have participated....

On Sunday, I went with my friend Lauren to see our other friend Chelsea in the closing performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Seattle Musical Theatre, which is the same company that put on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which I was in last October. It was wonderful! I had a great time catching up with Lauren and was really entertained.

I admit... I'm super excited to fly to Texas on Friday and have my first bridal shower on Saturday! I am also so pumped that I've gotten so many wedding related things done this week. We ordered the Bridesmaid dresses, picked the Bridal Portrait location, decided on the Tux shirt/tie colors, decided on a florist, and started researching makeup artists for the big day. I've also gotten the invitations all stamped and ready to mail!!

Tall stack of envelopes ready to go!

Hope everybody's week has been stellar! I'll try to update more often!

Previous Admission Wednesdays:
February 19: Valentine's Day, and Tread Lightly
February 12: Control
February 5: Diets and Side-view Mirrors
January 29: Weights On and Off My Shoulders
January 22: Yoga and A Bunch of Wedding Feelings
January 15: Yoga and Pain

Admission Wednesday: Yoga and A Bunch of Wedding Feelings

I admit... I tweaked my shoulder from doing too many chaturangas this week. I go too far down, to where my shoulders are lower than my elbows, which is apparently terrible technique. In class yesterday, a teacher I had never taken before took the time to show us how to correctly perform the chaturanga dandasana, which is to only go so far down as to where your elbows are in line with your shoulders, then push up to updog without touching the floor. I had always been going all the way down, touching the floor, and then lifting everything for updog. Totally wrong technique!!

This is my current state:

An icepack under the robe :(

I admit... I am absolutely dreading addressing all these Save The Dates that arrived yesterday. Even though I said yesterday that I was excited to get this done... I mean, who really wants to address these things all day?

I admit... I'm also at a total loss as to who to send these to. My mom says to send them to people who we really want to come to the wedding, and family. I mean.. okay. That's our whole invite list. Why would we invite anyone we wouldn't really want to be there? JW says to just start addressing and seeing where we end up. I'm just worried that I'm going to screw something up and offend somebody.

Soooo many to address...

I admit... I'm getting frustrated about my bachelorette party. We're planning a getaway to La Jolla, CA to tour some wineries there and generally just have a little mini vacation in March. I sent out a feeler e-mail to all of my 15 prospective guests to see if that would be something they would be able to do money-wise, and most of them responded with enthusiasm that they couldn't wait and it sounded awesome. So my sister and I went ahead and rented a house to cut down on hotel costs (of course that's dependent on how many people come)... and now I've only gotten 5 Yes RSVP's. All the other responses have been no, for money issues. This would have been okay if people hadn't initially said that they were totally excited to go! Now the house is going to be twice as expensive for the people that can go.... Ugh. /rant

I admit... I sound really whiny sometimes. I promise I'm so grateful for the friends that are willing to fly to another state to meet me and celebrate me becoming a Mrs. I'm so grateful that I have that opportunity as well. I really am extremely understanding of all my other friends that can't come because of other obligations or money issues... I promise I understand, I do. Even though I'm admitting to a feeling of frustration over things I can't control (because that's really the issue here), that doesn't mean that it's merited. Just being honest.

A building being demolished outside our apartment today. Random but oddly relevant... metaphor for being honest and chipping away at my "tough" exterior??

I admit... I don't feel very much like a ~*Bride*~. Maybe no bride really does? But I feel like everything is super stressful and I'm freaking out about everything and I have to go out of my way to get things done. Aren't things supposed to be done... for me? It sounds completely selfish but I mean, just like birthdays, this is the only time in my life I can be really, really selfish and picky and everybody understands. Maybe it's because I don't have a wedding planner (who wants to pay for that?!), but lots of responsibilities are being placed on my shoulders, where I feel like they shouldn't be. I don't mean to discredit my mom and my sister - they are doing so much for me and I am so grateful - but.. I don't know. There's a general feeling of stress and worry that I'm carrying that probably won't go away until after the wedding is over, that I feel should not be there.

Chocolate, the ultimate healer (Chocolate Martini from Dilettante in Seattle)

I admit... I want to care about the wedding day, and I want it to be perfect. But the amount of effort, planning, and money it would take to make it "perfect" makes me want to not care about the wedding. And then I get a little depressed about it - because, isn't this time in my life supposed to be magical and what I've always been dreaming about since I was a little girl? Shouldn't every aspect of it be meticulous? Shouldn't I bask in the engagement phase and treasure this time? Well, if I'm supposed to, I'm not - I'm just anxious for it to be over, really. I feel isolated out here, so far away from my family as well as where the wedding will take place, and I feel so displaced sometimes.

Seattle: Wet Streets and Sunlight (go figure)

I admit... Despite all of the above, I am happy, and I am in love with the best and most supportive man I have ever known, and I cannot wait to call him my husband.

Silly guy.

Trying to end on a positive note.. got any wedding planning advice?? :)

Previous Admission Wednesdays:

January 15: Yoga and Pain

Admission Wednesday: Yoga and Pain

Rather than these "Confession" posts I've been seeing around blogs, I decided to add my own little twist and call it "Admission Wednesdays" because I feel like it, hah!

I admit... that I've taken three yoga class in the past two days and it's been really wonderful. Two Power classes, and one Restore class!

I admit... I must have been clenching my jaw the whole time during the 1 hour Power class followed by the 1 hour Restore class, because I left with this terrible jaw pain on my right side. Not really TMJ (or maybe it is, I'm no doctor), but more like under the jaw, along the neck area.  I can't really yawn or chew without this annoying twinge...

I admit... I think it's really weird to leave a relaxing yoga class with tension pain since that's kind of the whole point. Oh well.

I admit... I slept on an ice back on one side of my face rather than a pillow last night. It wasn't that comfortable.

I admit... I'm putting off going back to yoga until later tonight to give myself a bit of a break.

I admit... that despite all of the above, I've really been enjoying the yoga classes and the teachers, and I feel really strong! I got my headstand back!


Any "admissions" of your own?

5 Miles After Falling

Welp, it happened. I fell during a run. Ow!

On the 29th, I was starting my run with Chilly, and he was on the wrong side of me, so I was trying to maneuver him to the opposite side of me while I was trying to run alongside the turn of a curb. This was literally within the first 0.2 miles. I must have tripped over my own feet, because before I knew it, Chilly was on the opposite side of me but I was on the sidewalk!

A cold and dreary day for a fall :(

I had so many things in my hand (new water bottle in one hand, leash in the other) that I landed on my knees and then threw my hands out in front of me to stop the skid. See the scratches on my new water bottle in the first photo? ...Damn.

This must be his "I'm sorry" face.

I finished 2 miles with Chilly, dropped him off at home, and then completed 3 more miles by myself. My ankle was kind of bothering me and the wind was making the temperature feel about 10 degrees colder than it was, so it really just wasn't a pleasant run at all. 

37 degrees!! :( :(

At least I was wearing my new gear?

COLD.

Wave Rider 17s

10oz water bottle

I'm glad I ran, but am upset that my ankle still kind of hurts and that it was so cold. Oh well. Not all runs can be fantastic!

Ever fallen during a run?

Football & Footpain

When I ran 2 miles on Tuesday night, I ran in my Nike Air Pegasus 29's on accident. I kind of forgot that I had them on, and I was too lazy to go back to our apartment and change into my Mizuno's once I realized I had on the wrong shoes. So, I ran in really old running shoes for 2 miles on the treadmill.

I've definitely felt it in my right foot since then - that, plus dancing in 3 inch platform shoes every night hasn't really been great for my arches. I rolled my arch on a tennis ball for a little bit last night, but it still doesn't really feel great.

Because, yes, you needed to see our dirty carpet and my unshaved leg.

So last night, when I ran another 2 miles on the treadmill, I was definitely feeling the pain in my foot and I think my performance suffered because of it. I was supposed to run at a 10'10'' pace, but that just wasn't happening.

On the TV: Conan, showing a spoof clip of the new Batman movie

According to the treadmill, I ran at a 10'57'' pace. According to Nike Plus, I ran at 10'24''. I still can't figure out - on the Nike app, why does it say that I hit 2 miles at 20:43 (the 2nd picture), but in my workout (the 1st picture) it says I did 2.07 miles in 21:32? Does that mean I did .07 miles in 49 seconds? And which pace do I go with?? 

Whatever. 

Today is a rest day, and so far I've spent it watching football. I rooted for OU this morning, and now of course I'm rooting for UT. So far it's not looking good. 

HOOK 'EM!!!

Knee Issues

I skipped my workout on Monday - I was supposed to run 6 miles, but there were a few factors that deterred me from really pushing to complete it:

1. My knee has been bothering me ever since my 15 miler on Saturday. I've worn my knee brace to rehearsals and during the day, and I didn't want to push it.
2. I was waiting on an important phone call on Monday morning. I didn't want to be in the midst of a run when they called, so I was chained to my desk and my phone for the morning.
3. I had the first day of Snowflake Lane rehearsals from 12-3, so it was a large chunk of my day.
4. The important phone call was returned in the afternoon, and I was busy with that until 4.
5. I had a callback at 8 that night, until 11.

Basically, I didn't want to run in-between the phone call and the callback, because I'd have to shower twice. Meh. I just pushed it to Tuesday morning. Unfortunately it was entirely in the rain.. ah, well.

It was an okay run - I wasn't pushing myself because of the knee issues (which have now fortunately disappeared, yay!) and I listened to my audiobook.

It rained the entire time, but I didn't feel my knee twinge once! Yay.

How is your training going?