11 weeks 3 days. Almost at the “don’t have to stress so much” stage. The last 2 weeks I’ve been feeling better and my skin is clearing up – slightly and bloody hell – finally. I felt like I’d slipped back in to adolescents for a while there – big boobs and bad skin. We have our 12 week scan on Tuesday with our blood test to check for any Down syndrome etc – and this is the test that will show us the sex of our little bubba. YAY
I’m not sure if I mentioned this in my earlier blogs – so apologises if my baby brain (yes it is actually a thing) lets me down here. I love running. For the past 4 years I’ve run in different running festivals. I started off doing the 5km Mother’s Day Classic with mum down in Canberra and really loved the challenge and the serenity of being with my own thoughts for a period of time. I then slowly worked my way up to do the 10km Mother’s Day Classic in May and the 15km Melbourne City to Sea in November. Having something to work towards is fantastic – remember I was talking about those big scary goals and then the little ones in between. Well this is a perfect example. My end goal was always to do a full marathon – now at the stage of doing 10km-15km runs it actually seemed impossible but I still kept it as a goal. Running is fantastic. It’s a fully body work out, it pushes you and as I said before – that time alone with my thoughts outside is a type of meditation for me. Combine that with feeling fulfilled every time I run that little bit further or that little bit faster – and it really is addictive. In 2016 I decided it was time to give a half marathon a go – 21km. I didn’t follow any plan (in hindsight I kinda wish I had) but every run I went on I either tried to go further or faster. I gave myself a time goal and smashed it. The thing about running is however – you burn a shit load of calories. Combine running 3 days a week with 2 days of weight training and you have yourself finding it hard to eat enough. During this time I did get very lean – my first long run while still trying to keep up my gym fitness made me very exhausted. I remember thinking – right if I’m going to do this again – I need to get this balance right.
Fast forward a year and I was training for my first full marathon – yup 42.2km. Crazy I know – it actually scared me thinking about it, but as I’ve said before – I put small goals in place and this time I followed a training program and really planned my food intake and didn’t try to continue doing big gym sessions. My legs would just get too tired and the next run would be useless. Unfortunately I had a couple of road blocks while training. About 5 weeks in I tore my calf muscle. I got advice from about 3 different places – some saying to rest completely, others saying I could still ride and row – this was the advice I listened too. I had come too far and had too much invested to give up now. So the next 10 days consisted of riding a stationary bike on a high gear for the length of time my run would be. One of my ride’s was 2.5 hours long – man I can’t tell you how boring riding a stationary bike for 2.5 hours was – but I did it. Nothing was going to stop me.
After 10 days of riding – I did a small 5km run to see how it was and all was feeling good. That was until 2 weeks before the run my bunions (yes I have them and yes they’re gross) were slowly starting to give up and not like the pressure. After my 30km run the sight was not nice (pic below for you that like a little gore). My bunions were throbbing which had also put stress on my metatarsals which were also in pain. Panic set it – I still had 2 weeks and one of the training runs was meant to be 36km. A trip to Canberra to see mum – and her wonderful yet interesting idea of cutting holes I my shoes so my bunions could breath out. OMG – it worked. They felt amazing – no pressure on the bone whatsoever. My metatarsals however were already tender and no amount of released pressure on my bunions would help. I didn’t get to do my 2nd big run – but did 3 15km run’s and a couple of small 8km before the big day.
It arrived the Melbourne Marathon – the day I’d been dreading and waiting for for 12 weeks. Holey shoes on, pain meds taken and I was ready to go. The first 21kms was fabulous. I felt amazing. Strong, in control, pain free, my pace was good, the day was beautiful. Suddenly though – the pain meds wore off and my metatarsal pain was severe. It came on so suddenly I thought I’d possibly broken it mid run. I still had 21km to go – my brain was saying don’t you dare give up – but the pain was so bad I had tears streaming down my face. A quick call to Chris for a pep talk and I was back on track. I had to focus on other areas so the pain wasn’t what I was concentrating on. It was the hardest and longest 21km of my life to the point that I was almost numb from pain.
As I crossed the finish line more tears came – I couldn’t believe I actually completed it. I was so incredibly proud – although it was far over the time I wanted – it didn’t matter – I’d done it. Post marathon feet were horrendous – another pic below – warning it’s not pretty – and I actually couldn’t walk. A trip to the doctor the next day confirmed I probably had a stress fracture and not to run for at least 6 weeks. At that stage – the muscles in my legs were so sore and tired – I welcomed the advice.
To be continued……….
Love and Life
The Figure x Danni
