I’m not a superstitious person but it was strange timing that on Friday April 13th, I had a minor setback to my running goals. At the time, I was working full time in Philadelphia and commuting via Septa train. I was walking my normal eight blocks to work when I was struck on my left side by a vehicle. I’m not trying to be dramatic, in fact, I consider myself lucky that I wasn’t injured more seriously. I did have a tumble and scrapes on my legs and arms though. It was the first time that I remember being in an ambulance. I went to the hospital and was checked out. Nothing was broken but it seems like now, when I look back, this is probably when my knee stopped being the same.
I didn’t really run afterwards; I leaned towards lifting. Finally I decided to go to physical therapy to strengthen my weak knees. My friends and I signed up for Tough Mudder in 2013. I pushed all my efforts into pull ups for those monkey bar-like obstacles. I did lots of hiit training and was counting calories.
I really saw a difference in my body. Leaning out with minimal running. I would say this was my “peak” body fitness. I was at my lowest body fat percentage. Then I started training to run again. By October, I was able to complete my first 5k without stopping or depending on my inhaler. In November, I ran my fastest 5k (to date actually).
Then around this time, I signed up for a lottery to run the Nike DC half marathon. I didn’t think I would get chosen but I thought it would be a good motivator to increase my distance. And then…I actually did get selected! So I shifted all my efforts to training to run a half marathon. While I was excited to run my first half, I was unable to maintain my strength training. Here the scale tipped and I lost a lot of muscle mass. Still trying to figure out how to balance endurance running with strength training…a work in progress.
teamninjaroll 