Focus, Focus, Focus!

It's been a while. I was in Florida from April 18 through April 26 with Philip and the kids, visiting his parents. I did a lot of pool running, and cross-trained once at a hotel Philip and I stayed at for a night, but still managed to hurt myself. I took a boot camp class at a beach, did a lot of sprints on the sand, and must have twisted something. We returned from Florida on a Saturday, and I went out for my last 20 miler of the cycle on Sunday morning, and that just did me in. I've been having bad left knee/lower quad/upper calf pain since then. Nothing seems to help.

Immediately after returning from Florida, I received a call from my dad's wife saying that dad was in the hospital and needed to go into a nursing home. Ooookay then... so I did my last 20 miler the next morning, then threw some laundry back in a suitcase and drove up to Rochester the next day, but since that week was supposed to be my peak week for marathon training I stayed in a hotel with a gym and worked out there. But we found a good nursing home (dad has Alzheimer's), that part actually went easier than expected, but it was really sad. I've had many dreams about him since then. When I ran my marathon pace 10 mile run last week, I had two goals: 1) not to stop at all and 2) to run the last mile faster than the others. I accomplished both goals, mainly by picturing my dad in that nursing home bed, screaming with fear and completely unable to care for himself. He never gets a break from that. I kept running.

I saw Dr. Ducey two weeks ago, he was hesitant to give me a cortisone shot then. I'm not quite sure what the reason was. He said he uses the shot when people have arthritis, which I did not. He wanted to try two weeks of anti-inflammatories first and prescribed Celebrex. He said he would still give me the shot this Monday, one week from my marathon, if I still needed it. Well, the Celebrex doesn't seem to be working at all, or at least, it doesn't take enough of the edge off. I'm really torn about the decision on the cortisone shot. I keep going back and forth, and it's playing with my confidence.

One one hand, I've been nailing my paces for my shorter runs, but with knee pain. I'm trying to imagine running 26.2 with this pain, which isn't terrible, but it's not great either. I did a ten mile marathon pace run last Friday which went very well. So why get the cortisone shot? On the other hand, 10 miles isn't 26.2. Any inflammation the shot could reduce would be beneficial.

Funny "small world" story when I was in Florida: The day after I arrived, I went for a run. Just as I'm heading out of my in-laws' condo I see a group of runners, all wearing yellow shirts, so I figured it must be a club and they would know where to run. I caught up to them, I did about a mile with them and they told me about a park up the road, so I left them and headed there. After a loop at the park I saw the same people with a Boot Camp group, and they invited me to join them. I hate calisthenics, but I figure it would be a good workout, so I stayed. Later, I hear that same group I ran with talking about a relay they did across Florida. I'm like, "hey, I know someone who did that all by himself!" And they said, "OMG, you know Hung!" I've been friends with Hung since I met him at the Dean Karnazes Endurance Run NJ in November '06.

So how's that for weirder than weird, I just happened to see these people, total strangers, running in front of my in-laws' apartment and they knew someone I knew. Wow.