Cutting up a big slice of humble pie

Today was day one of my return to run program and also the start of my new diet of humble pie.

I took my first serving of humble pie about as beautifully as the .gif above.

But wait Declan, you haven't posted in a couple weeks, catch us up!

Let's start with the funny stuff  (not in chronological order):

My wife and I took my daughter to Ravinia to see Laurie Berkner.


Big balloon flowers are great!

I can't wait for the next season of Dr. Who!

Worm season is alive and well!

I had some amazing frozen custard, strawberry blended with a funfetti cupcake at Lickity Split. I am still dreaming of this heaven in my mouth.

Gymnastics (or asstics according to my daughter) classes started again and I can make this for the summer!

And my son is due to enter this world next week (July 1 for those of you reading this in the future).

Now back to my humble pie.

At physical therapy, beyond getting my legs bruises and experiencing near black out pain, I was fortunate enough to use a Zero Gravity Treadmill.

You zip into the treadmill, with some ultra tight spandex shorts on, and the treadmill fills up with air. You then set it to what percentage of your body weight you want to run and speed. My first use of it was at 70% of my body weight, and then 80%. It felt great to run for a few minutes, feeling so light and nimble!  After feeling okay using the treadmill on two different days, I was given clearance to start a return to run program.

Today was day 1 of a 3 session a week program. My instructions for today: Walk 4:30 , Run :30, repeat 6 times.  Obviously everyone will be watching and laughing at me..

Mentally, this reboot of my running is hard to swallow. The decline of my running from peaking, maintenance, trying to stop from bottoming out, to bottoming out has tested my patience, my want to run, and my waist line. Add the 6-7 failed attempts to start running again, and now I'm honestly scared that this will just be another notch on my womp womp belt.

Back to where this post started. I did my first walk/run combo. I had to lock my ego in a box, then put it in a safe, then bury it in the ground, and cover it with scorpions. And I had to tell my doubts to just give me 12 hours to clear things up. The 30 second intervals of running felt like nothing, but I know in a few months I'll look back at laugh at this if this is successful and I'm not tweeting later today that I'm in pain. But right now, I really miss the long free runs, the therapy and escape of the lakefront path, and feeling all the work I put into running reward me in many ways. I'm hoping I can set up a timeline of when this can happen. Maybe I'll do the math later today.

What if my right ankle flares up today? My physical therapist will teach me to tape it up until it gets back to full strength so that I can get into running shape again. My right MCL is doing well, still sore time to time, but much improved. And my left ankle, the one I actually slipped and sprained, feels 100%.  As of writing this, I think I may go for the tape just in case, but we'll revisit the idea at therapy tomorrow.

Okay, so what is going on with you???