In the Long Run

One year and a couple days ago, I wrote a blog post about having just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It is almost hard to believe that a year has passed, and equally hard to fully process everything I have experienced in the last 12 months. It is amazing how much my mental well-being is tied to running - I think I have always known this on some level, but never fully appreciated it until being forced to take so much time off over the last year while simultaneously dealing with so many uncertainties and unfamiliar situations. I often refer to running as "my happy place"; it sounds cutesy but is utterly true. I am so grateful to have been able to log over 1000 km already in 2015 (with 22,000 m of total elevation gain!): the more time I spend on these trails, the more at peace I become with everything else in my life.

In that 2014 post, I was getting ready to run the Loop the Lakes 21k trail race - which I just ran again this past weekend. This race last year was my first fo…

I wish that I was writing this blog post with news of a fantastic marathon today. I wish that I could say I ran a PB and crossed the finish line smiling. Hell, I wish that I could say I crossed the finish line.

Today was not the triumphant return to marathoning that I had hoped and trained my heart out for. I have never felt this fit in my marathon build-up before and, as I publicly stated in my last post, I was fully planning on gunning for a personal best time. So what happened? Well, a week before race day I started feeling twinges in my left hamstring when running - nothing major, but enough to change my stride a bit. I thought it was just part of those mystery aches and pains that always crop up during the taper, so I didn't worry too much about it at first. By Wednesday, my entire left leg was aching constantly and the hamstring pain was actually preventing me from running. I went to a couple desperation acupuncture treatment sessions, where it became clear that the nerves fr…