They're Making More Everyday

Being that I was so close to my college ex who lives in Florida, I sent him a note to see if he wanted to meet up for dinner.  He replied, "Can I bring my girlfriend?"  Awesome.  I'm not sure why he didn't tell me, and I'm even more unsure why he thought this would be the best way to tell me.  I took off running down the side of the beach, actually looking forward to the sand patches today.  I wanted something thrown in my way that I knew would suck but I could take on.  I could barely breathe when I finished the sand patch, so I ran another mile.  My legs hurt so bad in strange places, I was discovering tiny muscles that I didn't know I had. Running on sand is the worst.  I got back and checked a picture that I had posted ...

... Sitting next to it was a picture of my Chicago ex and his new girlfriend.  His profile picture of them pops up every time he likes something I post.  And he has been liking things on my facebook ... Which I find mildly annoying.  It's hard to purge him from my memory when he does things like this.  I want to focus on sustaining the fact that I don't want him in my life anymore.  So I "unsubscribed" him from me, along with the Florida ex.  He won't see anything I say now unless he seeks me out.  I've been good at keeping him out of conversations with my friends here because I'd like him to stay in Chicago, but I mentioned it to my friend. She said so simply, "Great.  He can be with someone else.  She can have all the good stuff, but she's getting all the crappy annoying stuff you hated too.  Don't forget that.  There are a lot of other guys out there, and they're making more of them everyday."

Also after being down here, I've decided I want to be Cuban.  The food, the dancing, the careless fun!

340 Miles Down 27 Miles to Go

Arranged Marriages

I'm not sure if other girls operate the same way I do, but I for some reason always have a handful of guys I'm talking to.  I've somehow managed to find guys that I'd like to be with but for whatever circumstantial reason, I can't.  So I end up keeping in touch, meeting them randomly, and occasionally spending a few hours on the phone catching up.  I've always thought this was a good quality, but I think I'm letting it hold me back.  I'm keeping these tiny touch points of a relationship in the back of my mind, and I realized that I shouldn't do that.

One of my friends who I was traveling to Miami with me is from India, and he was suckered into listening to me and another friend talk about dating and guys for a chunk of vacation.  He finally blurted out, "Now I know why they do arranged marriages in India."  He said people go into arranged marriages with a completely different mindset than people who pick their own spouse.  They go into it knowing that they will have to make compromises to make it work for the rest of their lives.  Their spouse is chosen by their parents, they meet and usually "date" for a few months and decide that they want to get married.  It's completely different than in the US where we go into it thinking, "I'll make this work and worst case I will get divorced."  The funny thing is that the divorce rate for arranged marriages is lower than the divorce rate for non-arranged marriages.  It works ... You change the way you think about something, and you can drastically change the way your life turns out ... It's time to stop maintaining all these tiny touch points and let myself find one touch point.

336 Miles Down 31 Miles to Go

Learn From My Mistakes

My favorite people are back at the gym!  Spring breakers!  Sweat suits and light jogging and stair climbers. Trying to sweat off a few pounds still smelling like booze from last night.  I miss undergrad.

My goal for today was to learn from my previous mistakes.  I keep pushing and pushing and pushing myself and getting stupid setbacks like shin splints or injured heels.  So I decided today not to over due it.  I've had three five mile runs in a row, which is something I've never done post injury.  I've also never done this pre-injury.  I've been working so hard that I am back to where I left off before I skied into a few trees.  I think I need to reevaluate how I am living and changing.  I need to learn from my mistakes, and not go back to the old habits I had that made me so miserable when I started this challenge.  I've worked so hard on identifying what they are, but now that I know what they are, I need to be aware when I am making those same mistakes again.  I can't keep re-connecting with exboyfriends.  What is done is done.  I can't keep considering a career that personally sucked for me.  I need to continue eating healthy and keeping myself in shape.

Today I avoided pushing myself two extra miles and risking hurting my knee again.  Now I just need to learn how to apply this concept to life and not just running ...

330 Miles Down 37 Miles to Go

Chronic Pain Management

This run was a cause for celebration.  I've broke through the four mile run habit I was stuck in.  Five miles, and I wasn't even tired.  I feel a little bit like someone lit a fire under me, and I just took off.  Something snapped and I not only wanted to move forward, but I just got up and did it.

I've been back in physical therapy for my back, and it is probably the most frustrating trip to physical therapy I've had.  I've had back pain for about five years now.  It started from sitting in a bed for six months and not walking.  I lost a ton of weight and most of the muscles in my legs which only made it worse.  I spent some time in physical therapy right after my accident focusing on my back, but it never really made any lasting impact.  It got so bad that I resorted to cortisone shots a few times.  The second time I got one, I turned on the news two days later and there was a meningitis outbreak.  Caused by a specific form of cortisone that was injected into the spine.  I was instantly convinced that I had meningitis.  After about four frantic calls to my doctor I decided taking three cortisone shots to the spine is not something I want to do on a regular basis.

I felt a little bad for the physical therapist that is working with me now when I went in for my first visit.  I am healthy, I work out 3-5 times a week, I've been in physical therapy for three years, and I have literally tried everything.  However ... still in pain.  "Structurally I should be fine" or at least that's what the doctor told me, and I just sort of gave up assuming I'd be in a mild amount of pain most of the time.  I don't want to be on drugs, and I don't want to be in physical therapy forever so I just deal with the pain.  The other day when I went in though, we didn't start with the normal spinal stretches ... But they wanted to talk.  Weird thing for a physical therapist.  She wanted to tell me that she understands what I'm going through, she had back pain for years after a snowboarding accident and that it did go away but it took a lot of work.  My other physical therapist (I have one and a student that works with him) wanted to talk to me about chronic pain management.

In general pain is caused by some kind of trigger.  With chronic pain your body can get use to it, and continue sensing the pain even though the trigger is no longer there.  The way they explained it is through Phantom Limb Syndrome.  Sometimes when people lose limbs they can still feel it.  The brain is so powerful that it can imagine a finger on your body when there is no finger on your body.

The moral of the story today, is that you have the power to reprogram the way your brain thinks.  Your brain associates pain with certain activities where it was always present, but you can teach your brain that the pain is gone.  If I can teach my back not to hurt when I run, I can teach my brain to stop feeling other pains too. It's time to start trying to manage my chronic pain ...

317 Miles Down 24 Miles to Go

"Nice" Guys

It's time to identify a trend in my dating life.  They are all pretty much assholes.  I know everyone is always saying, "Why do girls always date bad guys?" or something like, "Nice guys always finish last."  Last night I went out with someone who is just really nice to me.  He just right away seems like a genuinely good guy. He asked me to get a drink and talk about a case competition I was doing, and after a few hours we hadn't touched on the case competition.  It was actually really refreshing and a little bit scary at the same time.  I've been looking for this!  I ordered a martini that sounded awesome ... and it was terrible.  He switched with me and ended up drinking a blue martini while I was drinking a vodka soda. He's not like the guys I usually date.  He's not super into sports, he's from San Francisco, his idea of a date was the two of us getting a drink and talking.  Most guys I've dated have taken me to a dive bar to watch a sports game, and usually at some point we end up with all his friends.  I actually really love dive bars.  I also really love watching a game in them, but at a certain point I had to realize that I wanted other things too.  I think this is what I realized when the marine came to visit me.  He landed and went to the bars to meet his friends.  He came over two hours after he said he would, and he was a little bit drunk.  It just does not make you feel special.  Anyways ... this new nice guy is also quite a bit older than me (ten years), which made me nervous at first.  But after going out, I think that maybe 10 years is a good amount of time ...

308 Miles Down 33 Miles to Go

I would have killed him.

Yesterday I had a moment where I just had to stop myself and yell at me, "What the hell are you doing?!?!?!"  It started completely normal and escalated quickly.  I had been planning going on a ski trip for a while ... and I was starting to have second thoughts.  They overbooked the house, and to be honest, I'm too old to get wasted and sleep on a roll of toilet paper for a weekend as a pillow.  It wouldn't have been that bad ... but I feel the same about trundle beds as I do about wood floors and toilet paper pillows.  I wasn't skiing and started to think of all the other things I could do with my weekend.  As I commiserated with my friend who also was planning on backing out, we started listing all the other things we'd rather do.  I hate communal food ... which was the game plan for the weekend.  I told him I didn't want to live without oranges for four days, and communal food is always 95% carbs.

As we complained, he said, "I'm not hitting on you.  But we should get a hotel in Boston.  You can have oranges.  I won't slobber on your alcohol.  Guaranteed own bed.  Also sweet hotel robes."  My first thought was this sounds indefinitely better.  I started googling for crazy things to do in Boston and looking at hotels in Boston.  Enter, "WTF" moment.  Friday night was Valentine's Day.  I was searching for a hotel room on Valentine's Day with my friend ... who was not single.  I decided two things when that happen.  One: Time to put some space between me and him.  Two: You can't just find people you like and spend time with them.  If my husband was talking to another girl how he was talking to me ... I would have been really hurt.  Then I would have killed him.  I think maybe I'll just put a little space between us ... I do not want to wake up and realize one day that I'm starting to have feelings for someone who is taken ...

305 Miles Down 36 Miles to Go

The First Bend

I missed it. But I'm not stopping

Something odd happens when you've been single and moving around the country on your own.  I realized for the first time, I'm living completely untied down.  I don't actually have to do anything I don't want to do.  In every relationship I've been in, I've done things like stay in, go out, travel, see movies I didn't want to, because my boyfriend wanted to.  It's not bad to do the things he wants to, you have to do it ... But it's a little bit great not to feel obligated.

I've been talking to my ex who I have crazy chemistry with a lot, and he said something that I can't seem to forget about.  He lives in Florida now, and he said, "I am nervous dating you wouldn't work now.  I think you'd resent me for moving to Florida eventually."  What?!  Who said I was moving to Florida? He assumed that if we got back together, that I would move there with him and just piece into his life that he has.  I was confused because I'd love to travel around and live somewhere new with someone I'm dating, so moving to Florida sounds kind of exciting.  But I can't do it with him ... It would be the first bend.  If I bend for him once, I'm sure I'll end up doing all the things he wants to and forgetting about all the goals I've made for myself.  He didn't seem to understand why I want to work in a hospital, or why I picked up and moved to Boston for school.  I realized that he hasn't really known me at all after my skiing accident, which changed a lot of things for me.

I had a short run today ... Still recovering.  I realized that I missed my goal, but I'm not stopping.  I will finish this mileage challenge if I have to overcome 100 injuries.  So I'm adding on another month and another 26 miles.

Challenge accepted.  No bending.

299 Miles Down 43 Miles to Go

Work Husbands

One mile!!! I'm going so slow.  I hate it.  I really don't know anyone who is alright with setbacks, and I know I need to just figure out a way to deal with it ... But right now this makes me super crabby.  Getting back to 100% myself is taking forever.  I'm in the middle of internship searching now, and I am waiting to hear from a really big hospital in Boston that is my first choice. It makes me so nervous to wait and wait and wait ... I've been working on this for so long ...

The more I talk to people in consulting, the more I realize that all the money, hotel status, airline miles, crazy travel plans, free amex points ... I was going to say aren't worth it, but then I realized that I really miss those things.  I have a good friend here, who was also interviewing for a consulting position and said to me, "We should both go! It would be so fun! We can hang out all summer!"  I freaked out a little bit.  We use to have a name for this when I was in consulting, "Work Husband."  You eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together, you share a car, you go to the gym together, you work next to each other, you're in the same hotel ... I've made some good friends this way, but then we always go home on the weekends and after a year we live in different states.  I always had a love hate relationship with it.  I was overpaid, learning a lot, and traveling all over the world.  But "date night" ment facetiming my boyfriend while I had room service alone in my hotel.  Everytime I wanted to walk away from it, I would get a raise or a promotion or a new project somewhere awesome and stay. Being gone so much put so much space between me and my boyfriend at the time that I remember getting a huge raise (~$10,000) and not even telling him.  I'm not sure why exactly I didn't tell him, but he just didn't seem to understand.  My work husband knew though ...

Recovery from running injuries is a frustrating process ... But I will do it.  I just get up and decide it's time to run again.  Sometimes I'm fine, and sometimes my knee hurts or I am so exhausted I can't breathe when I run, but I always get through it.  Rearranging my life is the same.  I go back and forth on missing someone who I know is not good for me, and I go back and forth about a career that I also know is not good for me. I guess I need to just learn from running.  Make the decision.  Just do it, and be done.  I don't want another work husband, I think I'd be happier with a real one.

298 Miles Down 18 Miles to Go

Wedding Ring Seeker

Just as I start putting consulting on the table for all the good things it has, I am reminded of all the bad things it has to come along with.  I went to a health care panel today (in graduate school they are always pushing you into "career exploration" which I usually hate, but today was awesome) and there were three women on the panel who were running hospitals in Boston.  ALL of them had wedding rings on.  I started thinking about my old gone Monday-Friday life, and I had a mini panic attack.  I don't want to put myself into a situation where I can't meet anyone.  When I think about dating a consultant, I am not even a little bit attracted to the idea because I know I'll be having dinner alone four nights out of seven.  I know I'll be sleeping alone, and I know I won't be able to talk to them for more than five minutes at a time all week.  If I hate the idea of this, how can I expect someone else to be okay with it?  Also, I tend to get fat from eating out at restaurants too much.  So there's that too ...

291 Miles Down 24 Miles To Go

Pushing Myself From the Beginning Again

When I got on the treadmill today, there was this super tiny long blonde haired girl in front of me.  I laughed, and thought for sure I could beat her.  Race was on!  And she was actually beating me!  I have to stop hypothetically racing with strangers in the gym ...  My heel was killing me  ... but I wanted more than one mile.  I literally hate recovery, all I can think about is how far behind I am from what I could do when I was healthy.

I keep thinking about a case we did in school, Coke vs. Pepsi: cola wars.  You'd think by looking at the companies that they are in strong competition with each other.  As we dove into how cola is made, concentrate, bottling, etc, we realized that the industry doesn't have strong rivalry.  You think they have to hurt each other in competition to win, but it turns out that when they work together ... They're each unstoppable.  They push each other to be innovative and successful.  This is the relationship I want, with a boyfriend and with a boss.  My professor said that one of the companies even quoted, "Without Pepsi, I wouldn't be where I am today.  They made us better."  So ... I guess that tiny stupid blonde girl (she's probably not stupid) making me upset that she could run forever was a good thing.  Because I stayed on that stupid treadmill when I wanted to get off.  I hate recovery so much, but here I am pushing myself from the beginning again.

288 Miles Down 27 Miles To Go

Closing Recovery and Patience, Opening Fun and Adventure

I love the holidays.  There's nothing that makes me soooo happy and sooo incredibly frustrated simultaneously.  I survived Thanksgiving dinner without eating meat.  I thought being "vegetarian" (flexitarian, pescatarian whatever fancy label I fall under while I'm trying to be healthy) would be tricky, but Thanksgiving sides are amazing.  And I took a poll and realized that most people don't even like Thanksgiving turkey.  Anyways, I ate so much I needed to get my but in motion.  Once I stood between my dad and the TV long enough I was able to convince him to take me to the gym, and I had an amazing treadmill run at my old meathead gym.

I finally feel like I live in Boston, I came home and everything was pretty much the same, but everything was so different.  My brother and his girlfriend moved in together.  They're starting to make the suburbs look not so scary.  Their problems are actually hilarious.  My brother moved in with a bed frame and six gaming systems, and she moved in with 1,000 boxes.  My favorite addition of hers is her five Christmas trees.  My brother's rule for her is "One in, two out."

One running annoyance snuck up on me that I thought for sure I was done with... Shin splints.  How did they find me?!  I haven't had them in months.  The last three runs, I've been basically running through them trying not to notice they were happening.  And then it hit me, I need new shoes!!  I've run out a pair of shoes.  I know this is cheesy, but I was thinking about how far I've come in these shoes.  I was bored, broke, and lonely.  Now I'm anything but bored, still broke (but on my way to making money!!), and being lonely sometimes doesn't bother me anymore.  Now I get to buy new shoes, and see where these next ones take me.  For my next pair of shoes, I want to focus on fun and adventure.  I'm closing the chapter on recovery and patience.

236 Miles To Go 79 Miles To Go

Surgeons and Half Marathons

So ... I shouldn't be running.  I'm pretty sure my foot is still injured, and after how big of a baby I was last weekend ... I need to be off it.  There is this part to my personality that won't let me back off when someone tells me something is not possible.  It's a blessing and a curse.  Curse when my brother tells me something like "I bet you can't eat that whole three egg omelette."  Blessing when my boss says "That kind of idea isn't possible."  Every time someone says "You can't do that." I think "Challenge accepted."  And then I do it.  I think the first time I can remember someone telling me I can't do something is junior year of high school.  I came back with a schedule senior year that was packed full.  Calculus, Statistics, Physics ... blah blah.  I was taking 4 AP classes.  My mom looked at it and said, that's too much for you you won't be able to handle it.  Now ... My mom and I already didn't have the best relationship, but this made me angry.  That year, I was on the varsity dance team, president of NHS, accepted into four colleges, and got a 4.2 on a 4.0 scale.  The same schedule she told me I couldn't handle.

Now I'm facing the same dilemma.  After this ...

And this ...

The doctors told me running, among other things, would not be the same again.  I had been training for a half marathon when I fell, and they told me my legs were very strong, which may have helped my knee.  (I'm not sure how ... I broke two bones, one into the joint, and lost my ACL and LCL completely.)  I also broke my right leg off, and my left hip.  I like to tell people I was on a black diamond saving a baby with a grizzly bear chasing me.  I was catapulted into the air, but the baby was unharmed.  Not the case.  I was however super super lucky that I didn't hit any higher, if the impact was a couple inches up, I could have broken my spine.  Anyways ... When I started physical therapy I told my physical therapist I was going to run that half marathon race I was training for.  And after spending two and a half years seeing him three times a week ... still not running.  So, this year of running is a big "HA!!" to all the surgeons.

I'm going to the doctor to check out my foot soon ... I hope I can still run ...

45 Miles Down 205 Miles To Go