Leah here. It’s been a while – June was crazy-pants, but we survived!
During the Great Knee Saga in April and May, I definitely had some down moments. I learned that I definitely used running as stress relief. Take away running, and stress affects me much more deeply than the usual, normal, calm Leah-runner self. I’m sure Joel, if I would have been able to, would have pushed me out the door for a run. I fretted, watching myself DNS (did not start) two races and saw the next one looming on the horizon, and I couldn’t train much and felt my muscles shrink up and die when they should be getting stronger (not really, but I’m convinced my legs are smaller… sadface). I got sick of icing and heating and stretching and doctors and elevating my foot and babying my stupid knee when it wasn’t supposed to be seriously injured. I just wanted to be back to normal.
However, not everything about the downtime was bad. Here are my silver linings:
I lost 10 lbs in the 10 weeks surrounding my injury, 6 of which were during reduced or almost no activtiy. As I’ve reacquainted my knee to triathlon again, it is definitely grateful for less weight to carry.
I swam my fastest Olympic swim time in the pool, 30 mins for 1500m. My average paces per workout have been getting better with all this swimming. I have had two huge swimming leg PRs by 7 and 11 minutes in races since. I’ve never really focused on my swim because it’s the shortest leg of the tri – but when you can’t do much else, it’s a great excuse to do so.
We were able to get out and enjoy some fun in the sun not doing freestyle, on wheels, or with shoes on – we’ve taken the kayak we got for Christmas out TWICE. What fun it’s been, and a great arm workout to boot!
I got to avoid a really miserably cold Rookie Tri day, and instead, play paparazzi to Joel, Manu, and Brian. It was fun, and I got some pretty awesome pictures!
In a roundabout way, it caused me to volunteer for the 5k9 race, where my terribly horrible duties involved cheering and dancing like a crazy-person at the finish of the race for an hour and a half and watching the cute doggies (and humans) finish a race. I was really down that morning but how could I be anything but happy after that experience?
….and we liked the volunteer coordinator and the experience so much we volunteered for another race – Cap Tex Tri on Memorial Day. We said last year we wanted to volunteer more and we’re actually doing it.
Not being able to train for a while means now I’m really grateful for each training session, and I was really hungry to prove that I could overcome this setback, and that resulted in 3 pretty great races (look for Pfluger and BSLT race recaps soon!)
What’s your silver lining this week?
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