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It's been five weeks since my last post. Five weeks since the marathon. I kind of promised myself a little break from running after that one. No races paid for (except New York in November). I wanted to give my body a break, because soon enough I would be starting another marathon training plan.
This will be only my second year with two marathons. Normally I do one a year. In 2012 I did two, tempted by the Twin Cities Loopfest. Ended up with some injuries right after. Coincidence? Probably not. So I'm being careful.
The week after LA I went to North Carolina to visit my parents, along with both my brothers. We celebrated my Mom's 80th birthday, but we also went to see how my Dad is doing. He is 80 and starting to have fading health after being super healthy his whole life. He is getting dementia and also getting frail. We checked out the senior living community that they plan to move to, and worked on starting the transition. Lots to do, but my Mom is handling it well, as she has many friends to help her out. I planned to not run that week, but my brother and sister-in-law talked me into an easy five miler which was fine although I was still sore and fatigued from the race four days prior.
The next week at home I tried another 5, but had some serious tightness in my right piriformis which caused my hammy to tighten up pretty badly. Same thing a few days later and I realized it was more than just post-race soreness. It was an injury. I decided more rest was needed.
A week later I tried four miles, but it tightened up again. Enough to alter my stride. Especially going uphill - the hammy was not working. Took another ten days off. This time I also started doing something about it. I dug out the foam roller and worked my butt over it. Did more stretching exercises. Last week I tried four on Monday and it was better. Still feel it, but just an annoyance. Did 6 on Thursday and another 6 on Sunday and I'm now starting to feel normal. Just a bit out of shape perhaps. I've added a few pounds over the month.
So this week I plan to keep slowly adding miles. Plan to meetup with the track group again, but I will be careful. Probably no races until July 4th.
In other news, this whole foster parenting thing continues to be a roller-coaster ride. The girl acts like a 15-year old - meaning she wants nothing to do with us. Which might have been easier to take if we'd had 15 years with her. She's got her issues so we try to give her a break, but it is hard to deal with a selfish narcissist who gets suicidal when you tell her no. (Literally. She spent 9 days in hospital after saying she wanted to die.) We came close to giving up, but the system has no where else to place her so we'd be condemning her to a new school and a group home. So we are trying to manage right now with more of a hands-off attitude. Trying to not care so much. Not try so hard. She spends almost all of her time at a friend's house, whose Mom she has "adopted" as her "second Mom". She basically only comes home to sleep and ignore us. But she's doing OK in school and socially, so we try to be content that we are letting her have a foundation.
She was on the wrestling team but wouldn't allow us to come to any meets or functions, so that hurt. We want to be parents but she apparently doesn't want parents. She wants to hurry up and grow up and be independent. Who knows how this will play out.
Well, I could write all night but thought I'd give you a taste. No one reads this anyway, right?
So, yeah, I'm running again, and constantly grateful for all the good things in my life. Life is good.
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