Green Themes And Ankles

Everything below is my own opinion. I did not receive compensation for mentioning any products or services

It’s been a few days since my last race and yeah, I struggled to write something. It’s funny though. I noticed that I wait a day or two before even posting on Facebook. I mean I have friends who not only make a simple post just hours if not minutes after a race, they make a detailed post with official photos and race times as well. I usually know my Garmin time, but I don’t look up official results and photos on the same day.

Anyway, I’m going to try to make this short and sweet so it doesn’t take me a month to post. If you read last week’s post, you know that I smashed my ankle in a door at a restaurant right before the Super Bowl. I bandaged it up, watched the Super Bowl (my Chiefs won. . . Go Chiefs!), and then went to the ER to get six stitches. I had a gaping wound, but it wasn’t a clean cut. I literally smashed my ankle. I had bruises and soreness along with the wound. Two weeks later I got our four stitches and then about a week later I got the other two stitches out. My doctor said I could do my races, but I would probably be slower than I wanted. He also said I needed to listen to my body.

This past weekend I had two back-to-back races, both of them with a green theme. It sounded like a good idea a month or so ago pre-injury. I did the Westport St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Race and B.E.A.R.D. 10K. My friend Amy and I discussed walking the 4-mile race together. She has an injury as well. She pulled or tore something in her leg. I was going to go to the packet pick-up for the 4-miler when we thought it was at the Ward Parkway Fleet Feet, but they changed it to Westport. Why make two trips to Westport? Neither of us lives close. So, we decided to do packet pick-up on race day.

The B.E.A.R.D. 10K (Building Endurance and Running Dreams) was to support a local runner Scott Green a.k.a the Bearded Runner (hence the second green theme). He was diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer last year. They had several locations for packet pick-up, but the first one was Minsky’s Pizza. I LOVE Minsky’s. My husband doesn’t let us get it very often because he feels like we could get good pizza for a better price, but I haven’t found a cheeseburger pizza like theirs ever. The packet pick-up for Minsky’s said you could also order food and part of the proceeds would go toward B.E.A.R.D. 5K/10K. I knew that was the packet pick-up we would be doing. It wasn’t the closest Minsky’s to us, but it was too terribly far away. Plus I did a lot of other errands in the area. The kids and I were super happy with dinner that night.

I was very nervous about the Westport run. I had done some running at about a 15-minute-per-mile pace. I was okay, but I usually had to take something later in the day for the aching. Amy and Jane came to pick me up. Jane had not been feeling well and decided to walk it as well. We did our packet pick-up and then hung out at Kelly’s. We even had a breakfast shot my husband and I had once when we did the race together. I can’t remember what year that was. Amy and I both realized we never walked an entire race before today.

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We had a pretty good pace going. There were parts of the course I don’t remember. I think the last time I did this race in person was the year before COVID. I’m pretty sure it was switched to virtual the year of COVID. We have not done the race since then except last year when My Girl and I did it virtually because we went to Virginia to see my brother. He is taking care of our mother who has Dementia. She had just been living with him for about a year at the time of our vacation.

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  They said they were changing him for St Patrick’s Day

We were about halfway through the race when my good ankle started to hurt like I was getting a blister. I tried to rearrange my socks and shoes, but it didn’t work. Later when we were back at Kelly’s to help celebrate The Back of The Pack Podcast’s second year, I saw that not only did I get a blister, but it had already popped.

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  So happy to finish!

Our time wasn’t bad for walking. We did run a bit at the end when we saw the finish line. Actually, my injured ankle felt better doing a slow run. My time was 1:02:59. I mean our pace wasn’t much slower than a 15-minute-per-mile pace. As we sat in Kelly’s, I chit-chatted and formed a plan for the next day at the B.E.A.R.D. 10K. My plan was to run/walk and just listen to my body. If I had to quit, then I’d do that because I still have to think about the Liberty Half Marathon coming soon. Amy had not signed up for the race yet, but she said she was going to. She had not decided on the 5K or 10K, but she said she would pick me up again for the race the next day. I spent the rest of the day resting as much as I could.

I was even more nervous about this 10K. It is one thing to do 4 miles. I mean I had been doing 3 miles already just fine. A 10K in case you didn’t know is 6.2 miles. Usually, that is nothing for me because I normally run that every weekend. Because of my ankle injury, I had not run 6 miles in over three weeks!

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Amy and Denise came to pick me up Sunday morning. They were both doing the 5K. That made me nervous. Then I found a really fast runner friend, Karen, was also doing the 5K. She mentioned a bunch of killer hills for the 10K. I found a few people I knew were doing the 10K. They were not going to be running with me though because again my plan was to go slow, listen to my body, and if I couldn’t finish, that was okay. I was here to show my support, and I still have to be ready for Liberty Half soon. I just kept telling myself this over and over again.

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I ran most of the 10K. It was very pretty since it was at Shawnee Mission Park. I caught up to Scott. He was in a wheelchair of sorts surrounded by a large group of people. He still wanted to do this race because come to find out it was his 300th race. My ankles were both hurting. The little band-aid over my blister was not doing it for me and my injury on my other ankle was not great. I was worried passing Scott and the others might seem rude, but I needed to be done. I thought they might understand since this was a race after all. I slinked by them a little bit before the end. People could see him a bit behind me. I heard them gather at the finish. It was a little weird having so many people at the finish as I crossed the line. My time was 1:18:02.64 which I think is awesome with everything that has happened!

I went straight for the Shatto milk and got back in time to see Scott finish. A lot of people were very emotional. I do not know Scott really. I feel for him and his family and wanted to show support by running the race. I tried really hard not to think of my brother I mentioned earlier. We found out very recently that he has a brain tumor. We hope it isn’t cancer and he is getting it out this Friday.

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  I’ve never had a pretty hot chocolate

Amy, Denise, and I left and went to get coffee and hot chocolate. Well, they had coffee and I had hot chocolate. I don’t drink coffee. I tried to rest most of the day. I’m still super nervous for Liberty and now I have a blister on the other ankle to heal. I’m not real positive about getting my 2:30 goal for Liberty Half. At this point, I hope I can just finish.

Super Bowl, Blogs, and Injuries

I’ve been “sitting on the bench” as one might say for the past three weeks. You see I had a very exciting night on the eve of the Super Bowl. If you read my blog, then you know I live in the KC area and I’m a Chiefs fan. Yes, my Chiefs won . . . again. That wasn’t the only thing that happened that night.

Hubby’s friend rents out a restaurant/bar to watch the Super Bowl. We buy tickets from him to help with the costs and we get the whole place to ourselves with just us and our friends and family. Nice, right? It was last year and it was this year too. The problem was with one of the patio doors. I was one of the first people to get food. No one was in front of me or behind me to help with the door when I went back into the main part of the building from the patio. I swung it open and then tried to juggle my food. As I walked through the door my left foot wasn’t through yet and it slammed on my ankle. Now, I remember it hurt like you know what. I tried to, no pun intended, shake it off. I sat down and ate my pizza. I figured I would have a nice bruise there. I saw someone with salad and hobbled back to get one for myself. Someone noticed my hobbling and asked if I was okay. I told them the story, and then they asked if I had checked my ankle yet. I told them no, but I was sure I had a bruise or something. They mentioned again that I should check it. I kicked my leg up on a bench, pulled down my sock, and gasped. What I saw wasn’t a bruise. It was a gaping wound. My jeans were fine, and my socks were fine. What the heck happened? It was barely bleeding, but it was definitely a deep-looking cut. My sister-in-law just happened to come back out to the patio to get some food while I was doing this. She asked what happened. I showed her and she went to get Hubby immediately.

Hubby came to see it. I think I had a bit of a crowd around me at that time. One of his friends is a nurse. She helped bandage me up. We discussed going to Urgent Care now or later. I was not in a great deal of pain. We agreed to watch the Super Bowl and then try to find an Urgent Care open or go to our usual ER. I say “usual” because Hubby is a cyclist and has been in a few accidents. Thankfully it has never been anything life-threatening, but he has given me a few scares. We were pretty much like, “Yay! We won the Super Bowl! Now we are going to the ER to get stitches!”

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten in and out of the ER that fast even the pet hospital. I’m usually sitting in an ER for four hours minimum. I think we were out in less than two hours. We did end up going to our “usual” ER. They were not as judgmental as I thought they might be seeing how I stayed to watch the whole Super Bowl before going. I was lucky and didn’t tear or damage any tendons. I ended up with six ugly stitches! I kept that thing covered because looking at it freaked me out a bit. It reminded me of Frankenstein. I guess this is why I never pursued a career in medicine. I’ll spare you the pictures. I know Facebook sometimes blurs them. I’m not sure about WordPress.

Two weeks later I went to my primary care physician (PCP) and saw him to take the stitches out per the ER’s orders. This was his first time looking at it and assessing the situation. He told me I actually fractured my ankle. When I looked confused because I knew I didn’t break any bones, he said I ripped the skin apart. The reason my jeans and socks were fine is because I wasn’t actually cut. I told my kids this later on and one of them said, “Oh, you mean when someone holds a piece of paper really tight and another person chops it in two with their hand?” Um . . . Yeah. I guess it was like that.

The doctor didn’t take out all the stitches. He only took out four of the six. He wanted to be sure it healed okay. I told him I wasn’t running, but I had worked my way back up to a mile walk with the dog every day. He seemed fine with that. I still have two stitches as of now. This weekend I have the Westport St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Run, the B.E.A.R.D 10K the next day. I also have the Liberty Hospital Half Marathon this month. I’m supposed to get all the stitches out before any of that.

Being on the sidelines and no races for a bit, I’ve been wondering about keeping this blog. I know a lot of people that were doing blogs that have not posted in years. I’m just now realizing that it has been about a decade since I started this blog! That is a long time, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with it. At first, it was a creative outlet for me. Kind of like a hobby along with the running itself. It seems like YouTube, Facebook Reels, or podcasts are the thing now. I’m probably not going to start videoing myself. I’m not sure about Reels. I don’t know maybe if I just made this a shorter summary type thing. We will see. I saw a lady the other day make a post on Facebook about her old blog. She cracked a joke about her blog when she said, “Remember those?” I gave a little chuckle and thought, “Yeah. Not many around that I know of anymore.” We will see. I’ll let you know how I do with the ankle and my races. I won’t keep you in too much suspense.