Live from Michigan Avenue!

Sometimes it is good to step out of your comfort zone.

I think that's why I'm in Chicago right now. The original plan was to run the Chicago Half Marathon on Sunday, but, if you read my last post, you know that's a difficult task when you are on crutches and can barely walk. I honestly considered skipping out on the trip altogether (I never miss work and always get really paranoid that something will go wrong with the broadcast or one of my other classes when I do), but for some reason I thought a getaway was something I really needed in my life right now.

I think I was right.

I got some pretty nice treatment at the airports: I got to pre-board, people were helping me with everything, and there was a wheelchair waiting for me when our plane landed. I wasn't the biggest fan of having someone push me through the crowds, but I guess it beats prolonging my injury by walking on it (when I can't walk). And the chick wheeling me was pretty talented—we were flying!

Probably the only complaint I have about Chicago pertains to the drivers—they are horrible! I think I got yelled and honked at more today than my combined almost-10 years of driving. A man blared his horn at me to turn left when there was a steady flow of cars on the other side, and turning would have meant death. I chose life. The taxi man would have preferred the former.

I decided to go to the race expo today, which probably wasn't the best idea. It was rather depressing. I was REALLY looking forward to this one, and it's depressing to see a bunch of runners who are getting prepped and nervous to take the starting line on Sunday. One of the funnier moments, however, came when I overheard a guy about my age on the phone with someone. His side of the conversation went a little something like this: "I mean, it's not out of the question. It's only a half, so we can run it drunk." Good luck with that one, buddy.

The expo was at the Navy Pier, and the weather was absolutely amazing, so hung out alongside Lake Michigan for a bit. Why is it that I almost always forget my camera when I need it most? I took a pic with my phone, but it wasn't that great. Still, it was a rather peaceful experience and was a nice escape from the mass chaos that I feel like usually consumes my life. (I would like to point out that I did not get lost on my way to the expo or my drive home—and some of these streets are confusing. Holla!)

I really only have one other beef with Chi-Town: The Rangers aren't on TV here. :/

I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow. It's College GameDay, so I might spend a lot of it watching games in the hotel, but that's fine by me. As Hannah Montana says, "Life's what you make it, so let's make it rock!"

We don't have to fall apart just because our plans do

It's come to my attention that things don't always go the way we planned.

Wait, WHAT??!!

It's true. Sometimes we think we have everything all mapped out in our lives, and then a greater compass takes us in a completely different direction. I wonder if God just chuckles every now and then when we are planning way too far in advance. I know I probably would if I were in charge of everything--I guess it's a good thing I'm not God.

I was supposed to run in the Chicago Half Marathon this weekend—well, according to me, anyway. Now I will just be happy when I can walk again. Being on crutches constantly is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I mean, I even had to use the electrical shopping cart at Kroger the other day. (I would like to apologize, once again, to the store workers for knocking over the display of Oreos. It was honestly an accident.) It's also pretty darn frustrating not being able to use an umbrella in this rain, because it is too much to try to carry an umbrella and crutch it up. Oh, hello there, drenched clothes.

I know there has to be some reason as to why I'm not racing this weekend, but I still have no clue what it is. (Please don't chime in your two cents of an explanation—some things are better kept to yourself.) An even bigger question I have is why I might not be able to run the Chicago Marathon next month. I raised all the necessary money for the charity; I trained harder than I ever have; I booked my flight and hotel; it was going to be an awesome race with an even more awesome group of people; it's the weekend of my 26th birthday, and I planned to run 26.2 the day after turning 26.

There is that word "planned" again.

Now for that other word we love so much: WHY????!!!!

Answer: I have no idea. Yes, I can look back at other instances in my life where my plans went astray, and it turned out for the better, of course. But, when you're in the moment, it's a little more challenging to try to look at things with a logical perspective.

Right now I'm dealing with a pelvic fracture—in two places. Apparently, it happened sometime around the same time I had the ruptured ovarian cyst, but the pain from the cyst somewhat masked the fracture pain, so I kept walking around on it (and later ran on it), which made it even worse. I guess that explains the writhing pain I felt almost two weeks ago when I tried to run with some of my favorite peeps at White Rock. My MRI last Friday showed the fracture is at both the top and bottom of this pelvic bone. Awkward. Painful. Frustrating.

I promise all of my posts aren't going to be so negative—I have just had some pretty crappy things happen lately, and they all piled up at once.

On a happier note, a special congrats goes out to all of my friends who completed (and some even dominated) triathlons over the weekend. You guys continue to amaze me on a daily basis. :)

My ovaries don't like me

I am frustrated beyond belief, and it just keeps piling up.

Almost two weeks ago, I had unexpected oral surgery without even being knocked out. It was absolutely awful, and I tasted blood in my mouth for days. I was on pain meds for quite some time, but I finally got back into the swing of things, and I thought I could be carefree.

Wrongo.

The first week back to work, things went downhill. I was in Dallas doing a mile-repeat workout, when I started to feel a weird pain during the first repeat. I had felt fine in the warmup and decided it was nothing, so I tried to ignore it. During the second one, the pain increased, and at first I thought maybe I had pulled a groin muscle. This concerned me, because Ian Kinsler has been out for what seems like forever with that injury, and I can't afford that right now. I tried to start the third repeat, and I couldn't go one step.

I stayed back and tried to stretch out, but it really felt like it was something not related to a muscle at all. I was in too much pain for my group to get back, so I thought I would jog back to my car. That quickly turned into a hobble. It was awful.

By the time I finally made it into work (five minutes late, because it took me way longer than planned to make it from my car to the cafeteria—where our entire faculty was meeting), the pain had magnified to an unbelievable level. When we were dismissed to go meet in various classrooms with our departments, I stood up and immediately sat back down. I was going nowhere.

My coworkers were so awesome about making sure I got to the ER, and one of them even stayed with me all day long. I won't go into all of the uncomfortable details about what went on in the hospital, but it turns out I had an ovarian cyst that ruptured, and that's what was causing the pain.

It's been exactly a week today, and the pain is not entirely gone. I hate this, because I can't run.

I. Can't. Run.

I am going crazy here, and a few people have even said things to me like, "Well, maybe it's just not in God's plan for you to be a runner." Or, "Clearly God is trying to tell you to slow down."

Wow, I'm so thankful for all of these people who have suddenly been given the gift of ultimate discernment.

Honestly, I really don't think God would have given me such a passion for running, along with the ability to do so, if He were just going to take it away. Then again, I'm no sage. All I know is, I don't know why this happened, but I really hope to be back to normal again soon.

I really want to cry, and I don't cry.

I caved

I did it: I finally bought a Garmin.

Welcome to running in the 21st century!

Needless to say, it was due time. For years upon years, I've been running with the trusty Timex Ironman watches. I've actually gone through so many, that I really don't think I meant it when I just called them trusty. They are made for triathlons and are supposed to be able to handle up to 50 meters of water. My most recent two have taken plunders due to water damage of about 50 centimeters, if that. I mean, I don't even swim--I just float around in my pool in my Sit 'n Float (one of my greatest $5 investments ever).

I've been debating lately on whether or not to get a Garmin, because they are rather expensive, and I honestly questioned just how reliable they are. The majority of my running pals have Garmins, and they all seem to swear by them. For some reason, though, I kept to my little Timex for as long as I could.

But sometimes change is a good thing.

I purchased the 405 yesterday and tested it out this morning on my run. So far, I think I made the right choice, though there are a few things to which I will have to adjust. I think it will be good for me to be able to keep track of my pace. Sometimes I get in a comfort zone and stay there, but I'm hoping this watch will help me to push myself beyond those limits.

One thing is for sure: this is the first watch I've had that's actually required me to read the manual!

Teachers who love to talk

I don't know if you've ever been in a room full of teachers, but can be a painful experience.

For the Summer II session of grad school, I decided to enroll in an education course, mainly because it met during the morning—I was really tired of night classes. Plus, the course was called Diverse Learners and is all about multicultural education, so I thought it sounded interesting and would help me be a better teacher. I'm not sure I realized just what was ahead of me.

I've been to trainings and professional development courses where it's become quite apparent to me that some teachers just really love to hear themselves talk. And they are—for the most part—very opinionated and often don't fancy looking at things through other people's perspectives. I found this rather ironic in a class in which we are supposed to be trying to understand other points of views.

For each class, we had to prepare "Critical Questions" on the previous night's reading assignment and e-mail them to our professor. He would choose some of them and request they be asked during class to spark discussion. It was very rare that one of these questions was actually answered. Instead, my classmates thought of this as an opportunity for an open forum where they could tell random personal anecdotes—and sometimes these situations had absolutely nothing to do with things that went on in the classroom. I can tell you useful information on a few of these ladies' husbands, because they mentioned it five or six times in each story.

I felt really bad for my professor, who had to suffer through the month of July in a classroom full of 30 women. Yes, the entire class was devoid of any testosterone (except for our fearless leader, who was too nice to say "SHUT UP!" to the gabbers—I could tell there were times he wanted to, though). One woman (who isn't actually a teacher) ended up crying during one of her stories about how she felt discrimination in a certain situation. I had to hold back from raising my hand and pointing out that she was a middle-class white woman. I'm still not sure what discrimination she faced, because I don't think she ever actually got to her point. There are kids who feel such discrimination and inequality at school, but we never actually got around to that in this particular discussion.

The sad thing is that this could have been a much better class if people had stuck to the original questions and points and related things back to the classrooms. Our jobs are about the students; this class was supposed to be about multicultural education for our students, not how you were upset because you speak Spanish and had a miscommunication issue with a waiter at a restaurant. While that is unfortunate, it really doesn't relate much to the intention of this class. I thought of suggesting to my professor that he hold a self-help session before each class so they could get it all out, but I wasn't sure how he would respond.

My professor—thankfully—always managed to wrap up the class with actual useful information and even told classroom stories about students of various cultural backgrounds. It was good to hear those, and the reading material was actually very beneficial, as well. Am I glad I took the class? Yes. Am I now BFFs with my classmates. Negative. (Although I did make some new friends in here—they aren't all ridiculous.)

The good news is that today is the last day of class. HOLLA!

I would like to give a special shout out to my good friends/running peeps who have decided to read my blog. Once this thing goes global, I think they will appreciate it.

So this is summer

Good gosh, it's been awhile.

Life has been one mass ball of chaos lately. Sure, school is out, so I'm off for the summer, but I am still taking grad school classes, so I've definitely stayed busy. Plus, there are so many random things going on, so I don't really feel like I've had a whole lot of time to recuperate.

I had a near-meltdown recently, and I'm not sure how to explain it—well, other than my indecisive impulsiveness. I've been living in this city on my own for about two years now, and for some reason I decided this isn't where I belong. At first I thought maybe I should live somewhere in between here and grad school, which would also put me closer to my running group. I also chalked it up to me being up in the city where I only have a few friends, and they are usually busy with their own lives, anyway.

I think I was just having a rough day.

But that rough day didn't do much good for me. I turned in my 60-day move-out notice to my apartment complex (my lease was set to expire at the end of July, anyway), and went apartment hunting elsewhere. I found that many places are much more expensive, and none of the places where I searched made me feel safe. I feel really safe where I am now. I was beginning to get an enormous headache.

After talking with my parents and then thinking things through fully, I came to the conclusion that I truly enjoy where I am now in terms of living place. So, the next day I called my apartment and asked the lady to rip up the move-out notice and that I would be staying.

Why do I always do things to make situations more complicated than they should be?

Maybe one of these days I will actually start acting like an adult. Or does anyone really know how to do that?

Papa knows best

Oh, where do I even begin?

I feel like so much has gone on lately, and I haven't had much time to do anything that I actually want to do. I guess the good news is that my grad classes are finished (until summer school starts on June 1), and the school year is almost over, and I will be off for the summer. God bless the fact that teachers get a summer break!

I suppose one interesting thing to note is a lesson I learned—the hard way, of course. (In fact, if anyone finds a way to absorb life lessons in some easy fashion, please share your secrets with the world.) Anyway, for six-and-a-half years, I have run injury-free in Mizuno Inspires. They are seriously the greatest shoes. Ever. So, it made sense that about a month ago I decided to try running in Newtons, right?

Big time wrong.

At first, I loved the Newtons. They made me feel so fast, and I ended up getting my PRs in both the 5K and the half marathon. But the day after that half marathon, I started having this terrible pain the bottom of my foot. I thought it might be plantar faciitis, but I was hoping it was nothing. So, I went on an easy run that day. The rest of the day brought ensuing pain with each step I took. The next day? I thought it would be wise to run again. I mean, if you don't acknowledge an injury, it can't exist, right?

I seem to be establishing a pattern of being an idiot here.

It turned out I had a strained ligament in my foot, thanks to the Newtons. While they work for some people, they are clearly just not for me. As my dad keeps saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (I promise we are really not a redneck family.)

I had to bike for a little while, but I am back to running now, and I even bought a new pair of Inspires. It's like running on a cloud from heaven. I just hope I haven't been set back a lot by my stupid foot. I guess we will see when I race next weekend.

I definitely learned my lesson—too bad it had to come with a bit of pain and the agony of not being able to run for a few days (yes, I should have stayed off of it longer, but I think we have established my level of wisdom in this area). Just make sure no one ever lets me write an advice column to runners.

After all, while I was watching a basketball game last night, my favorite quote came from Jeff Van Gundy when he said, "So what if you're bleeding?! Blood cleanses the soul! Play on!"