It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's .... Michelle?

My long run last Sunday was .... let's say, eventful. So there I was, around 5:00pm running on a glorious Boston Sunday afternoon, smiling as I'm thinking about the marathon which will be here before I know it. Smiling because I'm feeling great, my calf feels great, no twinges, no tightness, no nothing. Just running and feeling great about it. Life is good. Then ... I'm flying! Literally, superman arms outstretched, FLYING through the air, as both of my feet have apparently been lassoed by a rogue cowboy. Then KABAM! I come screeching to a halt as my superpowers do not engage and I do not, in fact, take off into flight. SMASH! BOOM! BAM! I'm lying face down on the shoulder of Rt 3, wondering what the HELL just happened to me. I roll over (and get onto the curb so I'm not soon to be roadkill) and see a circle of thick wire about 1' in diameter tangled around my feet. I really was lassoed!!! I didn't see it under some leaves and must have kicked it up with one foot, and then trapped myself in it as I took the next step.

Ouch.

After the stream of obscenities stop flying from my mouth, I recover my composure and notice my new, awesome running tights (ironically the very tights I say make me feel like a superhero - I actually find this funny a bit *after* I recover from the fall and start running again) have a HUGE rip in the right knee. And through that rip, I see what looks like ground beef in the area that should be where I'd be seeing my knee. Ugh. That can't be good.

Nothing appears to be majorly hurt, so I get up and start walking a bit to make sure I didn't seriously bang up anything. I'm VERY VERY thankful that I had my running gloves on - my hands would have been trashed without them. But both knees hurt pretty badly and my left elbow hurts. Well, I'm 3 miles from home and I know nothing is REALLY damaged, so I continue to walk a bit to feel better then just start running again. Eventually I start laughing thinking about what had to have been a SPECTACULAR fall to witness.

I make it home as I note that my supposed 6 mile run ended up just shy of 8. Oooops!!!! But I really did feel great and honestly underestimated the loop. Let's see how much my coach beats me up about it.

It took some time to peel my tights off as they were stuck to both knees - again, ouch. My right knee was DISGUSTING. Just a huge mess of a scrape. My left knee was also impressively scraped, but nothing compared to my right. And my left elbow was banged up as well. So, Sunday night, there I sat, watching the Patriots stink up the joint, on the couch with ice packs ace bandaged to my knees jacked up on Aleve.

I was fine - sore knees for a few days but nothing major. My tights, on the other hand, are goners. I'll try to mend them. Or not. It did look sort of bad a$$ to have a ripped knee. At least that was what I was telling myself later in the run, when I was lamenting the potential loss of my beloved superhero tights.

Although, they didn't ACTUALLY make me fly, now did they? Harumph. Superhero, schmuperhero.

Fundraising Angel

I have a fundraising angel! He came to me over the holidays when I was home visiting my family. I received an email from someone I didn't immediately recognize, simply titled: Boston. I almost deleted it without reading, as I thought it was spam! Thank goodness I didn't. After a brief introduction, I read the following line:

I will match any contributions you collect up to $6,000 and you are free to make this known if it will help your effort.

Did I actually read that correctly? He's going to MATCH ALL OF MY CONTRIBUTIONS UP TO $6K? No, that can't be right. I read it wrong. Let's try that again:

I will match any contributions you collect up to $6,000 and you are free to make this known if it will help your effort.

Holy smokes, it's for real! This is Reagan's Great Uncle (a serious athlete himself), and he is, in fact, The Real Deal.

Uncle George, my Fundraising Angel!

While I've got the Adopt-A-Mile program going for folks to sponsor specific miles along the marathon route (I'll be thinking of you during "your" mile), Uncle George will be thought about for the duration of the race, as well as Reagan and Lauren, my wonder girls who are providing the inspiration for doing this in the first place.

So, what do you say, everyone? Let's get to that $12k mark, thanks to my Fundraising Angel!

Adopt-A-Mile

I'm stealing a fundraising idea from another Boston runner: the Adopt-A-Mile program. Here it is in a nutshell:

For $100, you can sponsor a mile of your choice (choose one of the 26 that make up the course). For $250, the coveted last .2 is yours! I'll be thinking of you for the duration of "your mile" which will be a great help to keep my mind occupied for the duration of the race.

Let's get started - I'll keep this updated as we go along. If you see a free mile you are interested in, pony up the $100+ to stake your claim, and let me know you want it!

Mile 1 (toeing the line in Hopkinton): Mom & Carl
Mile 2: Mom & Carl
Mile 3: Mom & Gram
Mile 4 (Ashland Clock Tower):
Mile 5:
Mile 6 (Framingham Train Depot): Dan
Mile 7:
Mile 8:
Mile 9:
Mile 10 (Natick Town Common):
Mile 11:
Mile 12 (Wellesley College - the Scream Tunnel!): Kristin
Mile 13 (Halfway!): Drew
Mile 14:
Mile 15:
Mile 16:
Mile 17:
Mile 18 (Newton Fire Station):
Mile 19:
Mile 20 (the mental/physical halfway point): Therese, Dave & Morgan
Mile 21 (first unchartered mile / Heartbreak Hill!): Lisa & Katy
Mile 22: Erin
Mile 23: Cherry
Mile 24 (Coolidge Corner):
Mile 25 (Citgo sign): The Kamons
Mile 26 (the last full mile!): Brad
Mile 26.2: Hazel & George

For the gory details, check out this link from the marathon site: Course Map

Who's going to claim the first mile? The last? Heartbreak? I'll need someone every mile, so let's start filling this in, shall we?

79 Days?!?

Yipes! As of today, the Boston Marathon countdown shown at the top of this blog states I have 79 days left until the big day!

Wow.

79 days.

That doesn't seem like much, does it? Training is going well though, so I'm not worried. While I'll definitely be toeing up to the starting line fairly undertrained (my longest long run will only be 20 miles due to my slow start), I know that I have a talent for enduring great physical suffering. I've got my son and his 23 hours of unmedicated back labor to thank for that tidbit of knowledge. An hour of ungodly pain for the great unknown that will be the last 10k of the race will seem like a blink of an eye in comparison.

The good news, as you may have gathered by now, is that the calf / achilles is feeling great. I graduated from physical therapy just before the holidays, and have been slowly but steadily increasing my running time ever since. My long run this week is up to ... 6 miles! Next week is 7, and from there, I increase by 2 miles almost every Sunday up until the big day (there is a recovery week tossed in there somewhere, and once I hit 20 I start my taper). I'm looking forward to racking up the mileage - the runs have been feeling really good lately, and all of the workouts I've been doing in the pool and on my bike trainer have been keeping my overall fitness level very high.

Onwards and upwards!