Pre-Hartford: 2018 Year-Long Recap

Pro tip: pretend you're actually exercising by doing your PT at a gym.

They say "don't take things for granted," but we inevitably do. So let me start this off by saying how grateful I am to even be writing a pre-marathon season recap. Just getting to the starting line this year is a triumph on its own.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start back in January. As of the first of the year, I was sidelined with an "overuse" injury called patellofemoral syndrome. If you happen to be a physical therapist, you'll recognize that this isn't a break, or a strain, or even anything specific; it basically means I was having pain around my knee, mostly likely caused by inflammation. The trick—and what my physical therapist and I worked on over the next several months—was to determine why I was having pain and to train my body to move in a way that would stop causing said pain. For everyone who's not a physical therapist, all you really need to know is that bending my knee hurt. So running was out, along with biking, erging (rowing), elliptical-ing . . . it even hurt to walk. Also, stairs were especially painful, which, as anyone who lives in or around New York City knows, was especially problematic in terms of getting anywhere. However, luckily for me, my fiance and I had moved to a building with an elevator in late 2017, so at least I no longer faced three sets of stairs anytime I wanted to leave the apartment. That was one silver lining, and the fact that I could still swim freestyle without pain was another. So from January until April, I went to the pool 4-5 times a week and spent the rest of the time dutifully practicing PT exercises and trying not to feel too much FOMO as I watched everyone else get fitter and faster.

During this four-month span, I was faced with a hard choice. At the end of 2017, I was accepted to attend Wilder, an all-women's running-writing retreat hosted by retired professional runner Lauren Fleshman. Anyone who knows me knows how excited I was to be accepted—this retreat was practically made for me!—but given that the event was scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, I was now faced with a tough choice. Should I pay the rest of the deposit and buy a plane ticket, gambling on the fact that I'd be healthy enough to run by the end of May? Or should I save my money, give up my spot, and hope to be accepted into a future retreat?

With the encouragement of my physical therapist (who also happens to be my coach), I took the gamble, and lo and behold, by the end of May, I was finally running again. (Albeit very low mileage and with a lot of huffing and puffing . . . but I was putting one foot in front of the other with minimal pain!) Suffice it to say, that weekend in Sisters, OR, remains a highlight of my year. I met amazing women, communed with nature, and basked in a sense of security and freedom that I rarely, if ever, feel. It's hard to summarize the experience in a few short sentences, but the whole weekend was an important reminder that I don't always need to have an agenda. Every word I write does not need to be an act of performance, and every run I go on does not need to be in service to larger goal.

That said, I was still eager to get back to training for my "larger goal," so when I returned to New York (okay, okay, New Jersey), that's what I did. And man, was it humbling.

Fast-forward to the end of July, when I ran my first race of the year. It was a low-key 5k in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and I knew I wasn't in shape to do anything impressive. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to come in under 19 minutes, and, thanks to very few other women showing up for the race, I won. Two weeks later, I ran the exact same race . . . almost 30 seconds slower. This was yet one more slice of humble pie, but, to take this metaphor much farther than it needs to go, I got a scoop of ice cream with it this time: at mile 2, a man-woman duo started to pass me. I huffed something along the lines of "good job, go" and then the woman turned and invited me to "come with us." This was somehow exactly what I needed to hear, because I kept pace and wound up out-kicking her and another woman at the end, for second place. All of a sudden, I could feel that old love of competing nudging me. That was exciting. Can we do that again?

Still can't quite believe this trip was real. That's Lauren Fleshman, in the flesh!

I had just started searching for more upcoming races when, the next week in August, disaster hit. I got the call that my sister had been rushed to the hospital, and since both of my parents had just left on a cruise to Alaska, I was the family member left in charge. Without getting into the details, my attempt to "get to Cleveland ASAP" involved two separate trips to La Guardia airport and half a night spent in the Port Authority. To make matters worse, cruise lines still apparently communicate using smoke signals and carrier pigeons, so by the time I arrived at the hospital, two days had passed since I first got the call, and I had only just reached my parents to tell them what had happened. I spent the rest of the week in and out of the hospital, so needless to say, not much running took place. 

The good news is that by the time I was able to leave my sister's bedside, I had an excellent distraction lined up: the 2018 Hood to Coast relay! It was a dirty, smelly, stressful race . . . with really awesome people. If you want more details than that, you can get them here.

September thankfully calmed down, although it was still not smooth sailing: I tweaked my neck, and as soon as that was fixed, I got sick, and on top of all of that, a lower back problem I'd been trying to manage since springtime finally insisted that it would no longer be ignored, so I grudgingly went back to PT (although thankfully I was still able to run).

Also, it was during this month that I ran the second-worst half marathon of my life. This pattern is apparently pretty standard for me: before my each of my last two marathons (Berlin and Portland), I had an "all is lost" moment when I seriously questioned whether I'd be able to run the upcoming marathon at all, let alone as well as I wanted to. This year's "buildup" race was no different, complete with bitter tears of self-rage and utterly shaken confidence. But this is also my year of attempting to re-frame what happens to me, so I did my best to take away some positives: I did not drop out of the race (despite an overwhelming desire starting at mile six), I (miraculously) did not walk, and I got lots and lots of practice with my various mental strategies (ignoring my watch, remembering to be grateful, listening to my breathing, telling the doom and gloom voice in my head to "STOP").

If you look up "anguished emoji face," this is what you'll find.

And here's the thing about reframing: it doesn't always work in the short term (as can be deduced from conversations like, "Allison, you'll come back from this mandatory rest stronger!" STFU. You try not running and see how strong you get), but in the longer term, I think it is helping. I really am grateful to run again. I'm grateful to my training partners (both new and old) for their constant enthusiasm, and to my coach for his limitless patience and optimism. I also focused on one of the few controllables in my life this year, my diet, and while it's hard to say if it has helped in any measurable way, experimenting with a farmshare has been fun, and eating more fruits and vegetables can never hurt!

All told, I wouldn't say I'm any sort of "new athlete." I didn't come away from this year's challenges with stronger muscles, a leaner frame, or an ironclad mindset. But I'm working on that much-lauded "process" mindset, and one thing I can say for sure: I really did enjoy putting in the work.

We'll see what that's worth on Saturday.